The committee also laid importance upon the building of a suitable landing place for immigrants with convenient sheds and wash houses in the port of Quebec on the general plan of the establishment at Castle Garden, New York. A further recommendation, carried into effect, was that resident provincial agents be appointed at convenient places in Europe, such as Christiania, Hamburg, Liverpool, an Irish port, and also New York. At such strategic points information and guidance might be given to prospective emigrants, and their faces directed to the Canadas. The report of 1861 backed up these recommendations with others of a similar kind. In the spring of 1862, before assuming office, McGee again brought the question of colonization before parliament and "in the spirit of a broad, uncircumscribed Canadian patriotism, which knows in this House, in any legislative light, neither race, nor religion, nor language, but only Canada, and her advancement," moved for another committee. The committee was appointed, but in this year it lacked McGee's enthusiastic chairmanship. His ministerial duties kept him otherwise occupied.
When the ministry was being formed, he had hoped to get the Department of Agriculture, which included immigration, the subject in which he had most interest. Political considerations thwarted this hope, but on being given the presidency of the council he was promised that the immigration bureau should come under his department. The promise was not fulfilled, largely because of the opposition of Lower Canada. The French-Canadian members feared that a vigorous immigration policy would, through the inrush of immigrants, swamp the French-Canadian community with English-speaking people. L'Ordre, a leading French Catholic organ in Montreal, stated that "McGee's avowed liberality, which looked upon all nations and creeds alike, would fit him for minister of immigration for Upper Canada, but totally disqualify him for that office in Lower Canada." Such agitation was successful. It restrained Sandfield Macdonald from granting McGee control over the immigration service. It did more. Much to McGee's annoyance, it checked the government of which he was a member from doing anything to carry into effect the recommendations which his committees had suggested. Even the emigration agents in England and Ireland were withdrawn, and new ones not appointed. No event of the period gave McGee such chagrin. It seemed to him that the ministers were juggling with the most vital subject affecting the country's growth.
A work no less significant than immigration in the creation of a "new northern nation" was railway construction, and in its advocacy McGee was quite as ardent. Nature had endowed the British colonies of North America with a magnificent road system. In the seventeenth century the French settlements in Canada had clustered round the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers, and these winding watercourses constituted the one bond of communication. The United Empire Loyalists later erected their log houses along the wooded shores of the lakes and rivers further west, and the St. Lawrence waterway was their means of contact with Quebec and Britain. Without the St. Lawrence the Canadas would have broken in two like a bridge without piers. But one gift Nature failed to bestow on the British colonies. She provided no easy means of transit between the Canadian and Maritime provinces. Mountain spurs with dense forests constituted an almost impenetrable wall, blocking overland travel between the two groups of British colonies. The sea-route through the Gulf was tediously long, and was closed by ice part of the year. It was clear, as Lord Durham in 1838 had recognized with quick insight, that political association between the colonies must await the building of a railway cutting through the mountain and forest area and bringing Quebec closer to Halifax. In the years following Durham, the aspiration for such a line grew among the more far-sighted of colonial statesmen. It was considered as a necessary basis not merely for colonial union, but for colonial prosperity. The Maritime provinces were in need of it to reap the benefits of trade with the Canadian and American west, and to forge a commercial route which would make their harbours the winter ports of the northern part of the continent. The Canadas no less required it in order that they might have access to the Atlantic frontage of British North America, and find consumers for their produce amongst the seamen of the lower provinces.
The attempts to build an intercolonial line have a lengthy and chequered history. In 1850 Joseph Howe, Nova Scotia's distinguished champion of responsible government, obtained an imperial guarantee to support the colonies in financing the project, but the plan collapsed on account of irreconcilable opinions as to what route the line should take. In the following years negotiations continued, but a dismal succession of circumstances made them sterile. What the provincial governments failed to perform, private enterprise in part attempted. The Grand Trunk Company took the field, and pushed its lines west and east. But the vision of a truly intercolonial line was not lost. The need of it, to relieve Canada's dependence on American ports, increased in urgency. In 1857 the Canadian government, co-operating with Nova Scotia, again pressed the question on the attention of the imperial authorities, but without results. Nothing daunted, the Macdonald-Sicotte government resumed the project, and McGee was its warmest advocate. To him the railway was an instrument of creative statesmanship. "The construction of the intercolonial railway would have the effect of inducing a union of the colonies and making them one in interest and importance, whereas now they were but isolated, lone, undistinguished provinces."
In the Quebec conference of 1862, the first of the important colonial conferences, he drew up in company with Howe of Nova Scotia and Tilley of New Brunswick a memorandum concerning its construction and management. It was agreed that "if it should be concluded that the work shall be constructed and managed by a joint commission of the three provinces, it shall be constructed in the proportion of two appointed by the government of Canada, and one each by the governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the four to select a fifth before entering upon the discharge of their duties." It was also planned that Canada should assume five-twelfths of the risk of construction, the provinces by the sea dividing up the other seven-twelfths between them. Intercolonial free-trade was to follow at once on the making of the railway. But the scheme, like its predecessors, came to grief. For its adoption, the financial backing of the imperial government was imperative, and to obtain it Sicotte and Howland went to England. But British ministers would give a financial guarantee only on such conditions as would render it in the opinion of Sicotte of no advantage to the colonial governments concerned, and the Canadians returned empty-handed. The possibility of sinking money in the inter-colonial also led to disagreement within the government party. In hostility to the project Dorion in January, 1863, left the ministry. This confluence of adverse circumstances forced the administration to discard its intention of carrying through the much desired intercolonial line, much to McGee's regret. Little more was gained than the extension of the survey which proved useful in subsequent years. The most important step attempted by the ministry in hastening the emergence of the new nationality was thus halted.
A thorny issue which had much to do with the fate of the Macdonald-Sicotte ministry was that of separate schools. Early in the history of the Canadas a common school system had arisen which recognized no religious distinctions among those seeking education. The money of all taxpayers went to the maintenance of the system. But, in 1841, an Act allowed public support to denominational schools, and to such institutions Roman Catholic parents sent their children. The separate school principle was developed by later Acts in 1843, 1852, and 1855. Yet many Roman Catholics considered that the status given to their schools was inadequate. In 1860, 1861, and 1862, R. W. Scott of Ottawa introduced legislation to strengthen the Roman Catholic separate school system of Upper Canada. On each occasion he found a warm supporter in McGee. Indeed, in his first election address, in 1857, McGee had chosen this subject for his special championship. It was the one large issue on which he differed radically from Brown, and he was ever frank that in it he would not compromise. He made clear his views. "If you permit the state to form the minds of the young apart from parental or religious control, why not allow the same state to establish a uniformity of belief and worship for the old. The same pretension which justifies the state school will justify a state church." For youth the moral guidance received under the impress of religious teaching was invaluable. "In Scotland, Switzerland, Holland, do they launch men upon the voyage of life without a strong infusion of dogmatic religion—without a standard of right and wrong—without an ethical compass by which they may tell the moral north from the moral south?" The logical corollary from which he did not shrink was that all sects should have their separate schools. The followers of Brown viewed such a doctrine with dismay. To them the common school was the least expensive and the most likely to alloy sectarian feeling. The Globe lucidly stated their case. "We need the common school system more than New England to blend into one homogeneous people all these races of men. Carry out Mr. McGee's ideas, and we shall never accomplish that. We shall be a nation of sects fighting for supremacy; a people backward, unintelligent, unenterprising."
Notwithstanding the hostility of Upper Canadians to the principle of separate schools, Scott's bill, in 1863, became law. Due largely to McGee's influence, it was carried as a government measure. This was fatal to the ministry. Although Scott's Act affected only Upper Canada, it was carried against the heated opposition of a majority from that province. The principle of the double majority, to which Sandfield Macdonald had pinned his colours, was flagrantly ignored, and Brown with his followers had an ample opportunity to sing condemnations. The government's action was a confession that its much proclaimed principle could not always be applied, and that, as a solvent of political difficulties, it was useless.
The Macdonald-Sicotte government never survived this shock to its pretensions. In May, 1863, J. A. Macdonald moved and Cartier seconded a motion condemning the ministry, and it was carried by a majority of five. "We shall not," declared the Globe, "cry our eyes out over the defeat of the ministry, whatever the result be.... If it is destroyed now by its enemies, we may rejoice that the executioner's task has been taken out of our hands." But the administration did not immediately die. Sandfield Macdonald endeavoured to save it by a purgation, and the infusion of fresh blood. A reorganization of the cabinet took place, with the obvious aim of making it more acceptable to Brown and Upper Canada. Sicotte was quietly dropped, and Dorion took his place as leader of the Lower Canadians and partner with Macdonald. McGee, Foley, and Abbott were gently pushed out. McGee was removed to make way for a person more favourable in the eyes of Upper Canada, but many of the prime minister's supporters considered his removal a serious mistake. The Globe, which blessed the ministerial changes, considered that McGee had not obtained a fair deal. To himself, the event was one of the most painful in his public career. Of all men he was least covetous for office as subsequent events proved, but he craved the confidence of those with whom he acted. Sandfield Macdonald withheld such confidence, and never adequately explained to him why he was being removed from the ministry. The cards were shuffled behind his back. In any case the affair was momentous, for it jostled him from the ranks of the Reformers and henceforth he tended to direct his support to J. A. Macdonald and Cartier.
In the early summer of 1863 the new Macdonald-Dorion government appealed to the country. Lacking robust strength, its members laid no very great emphasis upon the principles for which they stood. But one significant pronouncement was ventured to the effect that the ministry would consider representation by population as an open question. This alone was sufficient to win Brown who promised to wield his lance for the new government. The election gave Sandfield Macdonald a majority in Upper Canada, but in the lower province his followers were thinned to a minority. In Montreal three of the ministers went down to defeat, Young, Holton, and Dorion. This fact the Globe attributed to the dropping of McGee. The elections altered only slightly the political situation. The government had not increased its voting strength, and it therefore lacked the vitality to carry through vigorous legislation. The evil of political deadlock remained like a running sore. Thoughtful men still shook their heads at a hopeless situation, and those with vision looked forward with more earnestness than ever to some great constructive measure that would bring salvation to Canadian politics.
McGee made his departure from the ranks of reformers the occasion of a dramatic utterance in the press. In June 1863 he wrote a public letter to a friend, Daniel Macarow, of Kingston, proclaiming his devotion to those principles cherished by Conservatives and expressing his fear of democracy. He believed that the surest antidote to the instability and rashheadedness associated with democratic government would be the establishment of a royal prince, and the nurturing in Canada as in England of the monarchical principle. He was confident that a monarchy would save colonial society from the excesses that seemed to be the natural irruptions of democratic communities. In the light of subsequent development, there is something a little bizarre about McGee's suggestion that a monarch be imported to the British colonies. But in the sixties it was not as chimerical as might now appear. The political future of the colonies was then obscure. Popular institutions worked in such a manner as to inspire despair in the minds of the critical. Partisan spirit was violent in its bitterness. Political morality, seldom very high on the American continent, was at a low ebb. The restless spirit of self-interest, a powerful agent in promoting the development of a new country, expressed itself in actions predatory to the community. The outbreak of the American civil war seemed to rock institutions throughout the continent, and accentuate the sense of insecurity. It was natural that McGee should look abroad for some means of bringing stability to Canadian institutions, and he was merely following a time-worn precedent in believing that a monarchy was a stabilizing force. All the prominent fathers of Confederation held a similar opinion, although McGee stood alone in his plea that the monarch should definitely live within Canada. His letter had no very practical results. It was little more than a gesture, transitory in its effects, but sufficiently significant at the time to arouse controversy.