The Fenian brotherhood had an intricate organization, with local bodies called circles, all under the control of a head centre. During 1865 it spread rapidly through the United States, and penetrated into Canada, having many adherents in Montreal and Toronto, with a zealous leader in Michael Murphy. O'Mahony believed in concentrating on Ireland, but two American leaders, Sweeny and Roberts, preached the need of injuring British power by invading Canada. Their views prevailed among a body of their adherents, and preparations were made to carry their threat into effect. In view of the many thousands of veterans disbanded by the northern government, the situation was grave for Canada, and was rendered doubly so by the strained relations existing between Britain and the United States.

McGee grasped the seriousness of the situation. From the outset he viewed the Fenian movement with hostility. He had not lost his lyric love for Ireland nor had he resigned his hope that Ireland's aspirations for self-government might be satisfied. But he had long turned his back upon the methods of revolution. He was convinced that a revolution in Ireland was impracticable, and that an unsuccessful rising would bring injury rather than benefit, notwithstanding all the argument and passion of Stephens and O'Mahony. Moreover, from the time that he took up residence in Canada, he condemned the introduction of Irish questions into Canadian politics. He believed that one of the weaknesses of his countrymen was their long memory, and their tendency to feed on past misfortunes. In his famous Ottawa address of October, 1857, he declared that, in the new country of his adoption he would not be guided by the hostility towards Britain, which he had inherited from his native country. Irish politics and Canadian interests could not be wholesomely mixed, and it was by the interests of the country in which he lived that he would shape his career. The new nationality of which he made himself the apostle could not be advanced by the importation of prickly disputes from another country. In March, 1861, he gave frank advice to his Irish countrymen in Montreal,—"I hold we have no right to intrude our Irish patriotism on this soil; for our first duty is to the land where we live and have fixed our homes, and where, while we live, we must find the true sphere of our duties. While always ready therefore to say the right word, and to do the right act for the land of my forefathers, I am bound above all to the land where I reside; and especially am I bound to put down, so far as one humble layman can, the insensate spread of a strife which can only tend to prolong our period of provincialism and make the country an undesirable home for those who would otherwise willingly cast in their lot among us. We have acres enough; powers mechanical and powers natural; and sources of credit enough to make out of this province a great nation, and though I wish to commit no one to my opinion, I trust that it will not only be so in itself, but will one day form part of a greater British North American state, existing under the sanction, and in perpetual alliance with the empire, under which it had its rise and growth."

When Fenianism began to spread, he was trenchant in his attack. To him it was a disruptive conspiracy which could bring only disaster in its wake. In January, 1865, he was invited to deliver an address before the St. Patrick's society of Montreal, and with bitterness, bold but not discreet, he described the Fenian brotherhood as "a seditious Irish society, originating at New York, whose founders have chosen to go behind the long Christian record of their ancestors, to find in days of Pagan darkness and blindness an appropriate name for themselves". In reply to the journalistic reports that Fenianism was spreading in Upper Canada, he declared emphatically: "I would say to the Catholics of Upper Canada, in each locality, if there is any, the least proof that this foreign disease has seized on any, the least among you, establish at once for your own sakes—for the country's sake—a cordon sanitaire around your people; establish a committee which will purge your ranks of this political leprosy; weed out and cast off these rotten members who, without a single governmental grievance to complain of in Canada, would yet weaken and divide us in these days of danger and anxiety."

With these audacious words he flung down the gage of battle to Fenianism, and the contest continued unabated to his death. From the outset his attitude placed him in peril. In the eyes of the more relentless Fenians, he was an apostate whose death would remove an obstacle to the triumph of their cause among the Canadian Irish. His visit to Ireland in the spring of 1865 added fuel to the hatred in which he was held. He had been sent over as Canadian representative to the international exhibition at Dublin, an honour he deeply appreciated. While visiting his father in Wexford, he delivered an address, far-reaching in its effects. Reviewing his past career in Ireland, he stated that the political aims of Young Ireland had been foolish—a sufficient evidence of apostacy which his warmest Irish friends did not welcome. But his remarks concerning the Irish Americans caused more resentment. He warned his audience that there was no national sympathy in the United States with Ireland and its struggle for autonomy, notwithstanding the rhetoric of Irish American orators. "In the United States there is no more sympathy for Ireland than for Japan, and far less than for Russia. In New England the people, tinctured with puritanism, proud of their property and of their education, hate the Irish emigrant for his creed, despise him for his poverty, and under-rate him for his want of book learning." These were unsavoury statements to those who lauded the institutions and people of republican America in contrast to those of the British colonies, and accompanied as they were with caustic remarks concerning the Irish leaders in the United States, they increased the odium in which McGee was held by his Fenian countrymen.

The telegraph wires hurried his speech abroad, and in every quarter it created a sensation. The complimentary remarks of The Times—a very conservative organ in its attitude towards Ireland—were sufficient to condemn his address in the estimation of nationalist Irishmen. "We commend the speech of D'Arcy McGee at Wexford to the attention of all intending emigrants to America—to the attention of all the discontented classes in Ireland—to the attention of all who believe that there is anything to be gained by plots and conspiracies against the British government." The Dublin Nation, in whose columns McGee as a Young Irelander had written regularly, admitted regretfully a marked falling away from his attitude in 1848. "Irish nationalists of the generation which has entered public life since 1848 will surely be startled by the boldness and severity of Mr. McGee's judgments on men and movements amongst which he himself figured so prominently seventeen years ago.... They reveal a fact long known—and which indeed Mr. McGee has never affected to conceal—that of all the Young Ireland leaders, he has receded farthest in the rebound or reaction which followed upon the collapse of that unhappy year of revolutions."

Amongst many Irish in Montreal McGee's Wexford speech aroused anger and resentment. Six hundred of his constituents issued an emphatic disclaimer. At some public meetings his name was hissed as a Judas. During the Hibernian society picnic at Niagara Falls, three groans were given for the traitor McGee. But he had put his hand to the plough, and he was determined not to turn back on the furrow. During a speech in November he attacked with increased severity the folly of those who supported Fenianism. He sneered upon the mock republic which the Fenians had established in New York, with O'Mahony, an escaped lunatic, as president. With withering scorn he declared: "Many of my friends complain that in my Wexford speech I ought to have diluted my address with some strictures on the Irish grievances, which badly call for redress. I recognize these grievances as well as they do. I will go as far as any man in a constitutional effort to obtain redress. I will resign, if necessary, my place in the ministry, so as to move a resolution in parliament along this line. God knows the Ireland I loved in my youth is near and dear to my heart. She was a fair and radiant vision, full of the holy self-sacrifice of the older time, but this Billingsgate beldame, reeling and dishevelled from the purlieus of New York, with blasphemy on her lips, and all uncleanliness in her breast, this shameless impostor I resist with scorn and detestation." Such provocative words merely widened the breach between McGee and his Fenian countrymen. They may have restrained many Canadian Irish from joining the Fenian conspiracy, but they infuriated the extremists, who did not bury their hate.

In June, 1866, the crisis in the history of Fenianism occurred. The long projected invasion of Canada took place. One thousand American Irish under the command of Col. O'Neill, a man who had fought with distinction under Sherman, crossed the Niagara river. They won a slight skirmish at Ridgeway, but the threatened interference of the American government combined with the difficulty of bringing up reinforcements forced them back across the river. The gathering storm had passed, but it left bitter memories behind. The trials of arrested Fenians kept feeling high, and in this state of ferment the last year of the old régime in Canada passed. The failure of the invasion left Canadians free to complete the work of Confederation.

CHAPTER VI
CLOSING YEARS

In November, 1866, the delegation of ministers appointed to represent Canada at the final drafting of the federal constitution sailed for England. McGee was not a member of the party, but some months later, in February, 1867, he also left on what was destined to be his last visit to Europe. He went primarily to represent Canada at the international exposition which Louis Napoleon in a burst of goodwill held in Paris. At this time his mind continued to be distressed by the Fenian movement in Ireland and in America, and his imagination grappled with plans whereby Irish discontent might be allayed. It was characteristic that one of his first acts on reaching England was to address letters on the question to the two leaders of the government, Lord Derby and his brilliant lieutenant, Benjamin Disraeli. He emphasized that the first task of Britain was to re-establish confidence among the Irish people in the good intentions of imperial statesmen. The blundering policy of the past had blasted such confidence. The surest means to its repair was to refer the whole state of Ireland to a royal commission of leading Irishmen in whom the people might have faith. Thus the local confidence felt in the individuals might by a natural effect be transferred to the government which appointed them, and the first step in the reconciliation of the two islands be attained. Future advances might then be made upon the lines laid down by the commission. McGee's suggestion was at the time apparently too bold for imperial statesmen, yet it was substantially carried into effect fifty years later when the famous convention under the chairmanship of Sir Horace Plunkett met in the Dublin rotunda.