Hurrying on from London, McGee reached Rome in March. Professional business called him there. A dispute had arisen in Montreal between St. Patrick's parish church and the Roman Catholic bishop in ordinary, who sought to divide the parish. An appeal was made to the Pope. McGee, with Thomas Ryan, represented the case of St. Patrick's, and obtained a favourable answer to their suit. It is to be expected that with his deep Catholic sympathies and sensitive imagination, McGee would be much impressed by the ancient capital of the Catholic world. "I shall never," he wrote, "be able to get this city out of my memory and imagination." But he was soon in an atmosphere very different from the haunting impressiveness of Rome.
In April he was back in Paris for the opening of the exposition on May 1. The French capital seldom seemed so gay as in the spring of 1867. Although the Second Empire was undermined and was soon to tumble like a house of cards, it had all the glitter of tinsel splendour. Louis Napoleon, in the heyday of his career, presided royally over the exhibition which his government had assembled, and he honoured Canada, the youngest nation, by the appointment of McGee as an examiner for prizes. But amid Parisian magnificence, McGee was not forgetful of those affairs which surrounded the birth of the Canadian Dominion. One political event filled him with uneasiness. The Reformers who followed George Brown began to kick against the traces of the coalition. They had agreed to support the government upon all questions directly affecting confederation, but they announced that just as soon as the constitution became law they would withdraw their support. Brown with his pronounced puritan earnestness and sledge-hammer methods preached that all coalitions were evil, and none more evil than that formed by John A. Macdonald. In the estimation of McGee, there were grave dangers involved in the renewal of party warfare. Federation was by no means out of the woods. The hostile attitude of large numbers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick combined with the recommencement of party strife in the Canadas might well imperil the structure so painfully erected. On April 9, 1867, he penned his fears to Macdonald who was then in London. "There seem some rather embarrassing symptoms of old party warfare getting up again, before confederation has even had a trial. Theoretically, it is true, the work is done, but practically it is only beginning. At such a real crisis personal and party politics might afford to listen awhile."
Of more significance was his political circular dispatched from Paris in May. In the main it was an attack on the revival of the old parties, besmeared as they were with the mud of former conflicts. It contained the plea that "parties may, or rather must, arise under the operations of the new constitution itself; but let them arise out of conflicts of interpretation; out of the sequence of events; out of the merits or demerits of the policy or want of policy of the first federal administration. Do not let us, for our common country's sake—for the dear sake of our existence, not to say establishment, as a distinct free people, in North America—usher in our new condition of things, by raking up old sores and pelting each other with old nicknames". There was danger not merely of party conflict hampering the new institutions, but of Canadian statesmen meeting the venture of the young Dominion with minds insufficiently occupied with constructive plans. McGee briefly outlined his own views on such pressing questions as colonization, railway building, protective legislation, and educational institutions. On all these matters action had soon to be taken, and it was the path of wisdom to think about them early.
On May 25, he was back in Montreal. The civic reception was warm and sincere, but it was not without its shadows. It was clear that McGee no longer had the unanimous homage of his constituents. His truceless war upon Fenianism had left him many enemies amongst the Irish population, and mingled with the voices of welcome were those of criticism. Yet the message with which he greeted his constituents was the same plea of good will, reinforced with his artistry of words, which he had so long generously advanced. "Many of the young men here to-day will live to see the proof of what I am about to state, that all other politics that have been preached in British America will grow old and lose their lustre, but the conciliation of class and class, the policy of linking together all our people in one solid chain, and making up for the comparative paucity of our members, being as we are a small people in this respect, by the moral influence of our unity; the policy of smoothing down the sharp and wounding edges of hostile prejudices; the policy of making all feel an interest in the country, and each man in the character of each section of the community, and of each other—each for all, and all for each—this policy will never grow old, never will lose its lustre. The day never will come when the excellency of its beauty will depart, so long as there is such a geographic denomination as Canada."
An incident soon occurred which showed how ready was McGee to sacrifice his own ambitions for the cause he eloquently pleaded. In June, John A. Macdonald grappled with the task of forming the first ministry of the Dominion which was to be proclaimed on July 1. His difficulties were acute. Cartier, with Gallic petulance, insisted upon having in the cabinet three French-Canadian representatives. The Protestant minority of Lower Canada, with Galt as leader, also demanded representation. McGee, as the most distinguished of the Irish Roman Catholics, and as one of the most influential champions of federation, was unquestionably entitled to office. Thus there would have been five ministers from the province of Quebec. But Howland and McDougall, reformers from the upper province who supported Macdonald, demanded that Ontario, in virtue of its larger population, should have one more member than Quebec. To satisfy all parties would mean that Ontario and Quebec should have between them eleven cabinet seats. With two representatives from each of the maritime provinces the cabinet would in the estimation of Macdonald be unworkably large. So much was he repelled by the prospect that he was on the point of advising the governor-general to send for Brown when Tupper and McGee volunteered to facilitate matters by declining office. One of the two Nova Scotian members might then be a representative of the Roman Catholics, and Tupper proposed Edward Kenny of Halifax as a suitable man. Macdonald accepted this generous offer, which on his own confession enabled him to patch together the first cabinet of the Dominion.
The sacrifice on the part of McGee and Tupper was considerable. They were men in that lusty prime of life when the passion for building a career is strong. Both had worked for confederation with a zeal exceeded by none. For McGee an office in the first cabinet of the Dominion, whose emergence he had long heralded, would have been a deep satisfaction. His mind was charged with plans for the strengthening of the young nation. All the imaginative schemes which the "Canada First" party later championed were in his thoughts, and would have found in him an eloquent exponent. Yet he stepped aside from such prospects of attaining a certain distinction, without the slightest attempt to bargain for place or office, and the self-denial was the keener in that his pecuniary means were slender.
Following soon upon the announcement of the new government on July 1, the election campaign for the first Canadian parliament began. It was McGee's last and most strenuous contest. The issue in his constituency was Fenianism. For the first time, a large body of his constituents chose as an opponent an Irish Roman Catholic, a Mr. Devlin, who canvassed for the radical vote. From the outset the campaign was tumultuous. McGee's first meeting was broken up by the violence of a mob and he himself narrowly escaped injury. But he was not cowed. He had learned that in public life one must be prepared to pass the fierce test of election trials. He was determined to fight the opposition without gloves. In August he published a series of letters reviewing the growth of the Fenian brotherhood in Montreal. With an indiscreet boldness, he named the men who had been leaders in conspiracy and made public their communications with the headquarters in New York. Such an exposure, incriminating many leading Montreal Irishmen, intensified the bitterness of the contest. Among his opponents were relentless men who were determined to make it now a fight to the death. His life came to be in danger, and during the remainder of the campaign he was under police protection. On nomination day, August 20, a mob jostled him from the hustings, and the lives of his friends were threatened. In spite of this he carried the election, although with a much depleted majority. One ominous fact stood out amid the tumults of these weeks. He had lost the unanimous homage of his Catholic countrymen. Formal evidence of this was exhibited some months later when his name was struck from the lists of the St. Patrick's society, of which he had formerly been the president.
In November the parliament of the Dominion assembled. It might seem that Confederation, being carried, was no longer an issue. Such was by no means the case. Nova Scotia had repented her action in joining with the other colonies, and in a mood of sulkiness sent to parliament a solid phalanx of anti-unionists directed by a veteran political strategist, Joseph Howe. It was a singular twist of circumstances and personal motives which pushed Howe to the front as an opponent of federation. Little more than four years before, when on the mention of colonial union the heart of the average politician failed him with fear, Joseph Howe had stood at Halifax on the same platform with McGee and used his eloquent tongue for the advancement of colonial co-operation. As a popularizer of the idea of union, he ranked close to McGee, as in native eloquence he was scarcely inferior. But while the member for Montreal without deviation pleaded in season and out of season the great cause which had captivated his imagination, Howe at the critical time drew back, and blemished a great career by endeavouring to block what he had formerly advocated. Whatever were the reasons influencing him—and they were not all selfish—he was not found reaping in the field where he, McGee, and others had sown. In November he was attacking Confederation in the House, and McGee with stern admonishing eloquence was defending it against his assault.
In the succeeding months McGee's activity was as varied and ceaseless as ever. He was still in very large demand as a lecturer, and with personal trouble and expense he went long distances to deliver lectures for the benefit of charities. One of his most famous addresses was on The Mental Outfit of the New Dominion, delivered in Montreal on November 4, 1867, in which he pleaded for the development of mental self-reliance as an essential condition of political independence. A literature to shape and express the mind of the new nation was as imperative as self-governing institutions. At the time Canada had no literature. Journalism, it is true, flourished like a green bay tree. In the four provinces there were about one hundred and thirty journals, thirty of which were published daily. But this ephemeral literature was characterized by a narrowness of view, a local egotism, and a lamentable absence of anything approaching a catholic spirit. In addition to elevating the tone of journalism, McGee believed that Canadians with national development at heart must encourage a literature "calculated to our own meridian, and hitting home our own society, either where it is sluggish or priggish, or wholly defective in its present style of culture". Literary talent should be cherished as precious. He hoped that "if a native book should lack the finish of a foreign one, as a novice may well be less expert than an old hand, yet if the book be honestly designed, and conscientiously worked up, the author shall be encouraged, not only for his own sake, but for the sake of the better things which we look forward to with hopefulness. I make this plea on behalf of those who venture upon authorship among us because I believe the existence of a recognized literary class will by and by be felt as a state and social necessity." The new northern nation, notwithstanding that it possessed all the benefits which Nature could possibly bestow, would still in his estimation be impoverished if it failed to develop a cultural life. He endeavoured to direct the attention of Canadians to the fact that there should be built upon the political unity already attained a life of the mind on which the vitality of a nation finally depended.
The cause of union which had fired McGee's mind since his immigration to Canada was now attained. What was to be his future? Political life had never failed to attract him, for he liked its intensities of struggle. His future in Canadian politics was secure. Few public men of the time were held in such esteem throughout the British provinces, and none had so quickly jumped into prominence. His career was not closed by his absence from the first cabinet of the Dominion. Macdonald had confessed that his admission to a cabinet office could only be a matter of short delay. Yet work other than that of public life attracted him. He had never lost the ideal, born in his youth, of devoting himself to literature. By temperament he was a man of letters. His vivid imagination sought expression in the creation of what might be a permanent addition to literature: