CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSION
McGee's position among the few outstanding fathers of Confederation is secure. His work was not that of a constitutional architect giving expression to political needs in the legal terms of a constitution. Nor was he a party leader, subtly pulling together the strings guiding political groups, and through the resulting combination carrying measures beneficial to the community. In both these fields Sir John Macdonald easily carries away most of the honours. McGee's task was that of inspiration. His position was that of a prophet and a guide. Creative statesmen fall into two categories—those who inspire a people to establish new structures, and those who build in under their influence the bricks and mortar of the new creation. McGee, in the most plastic period of Canadian history, belonged to the former class. Throughout the brief span of his life in Canada, he had been the untiring advocate of union amongst the colonies. He had championed it in the press and on public platforms from Lake Huron to the Atlantic. In the legislature, he had pushed it forward through the weary bickerings over much smaller issues. He had made the colonists realize that to them there was no subject of equal magnitude. This was the prime question of their destiny.
Coming to the Canadas as a stranger, his mind was not cramped by local patriotism nor handicapped by the shortness of vision characteristic of many colonial leaders. He saw the common interests of all the colonies to a degree that was difficult with men who had matured within the confines of one, and who were content to worship only at its shrine.
He had an additional advantage. He had been reared in an old community with long traditions and in possession of that virile community-consciousness which we call nationality. His mind had developed in contact with a group of young brilliant men who sought to revivify the life of their nation, and who went to its traditions for inspiration. McGee never lost the effect of such experiences and aspirations. The vision of giving new vitality to a nation and setting it on the path of fresh development continued to stir his imagination. When he came to Canada, he did not find an old community, as in Ireland, in need of inspiration for fresh accomplishments; he found all the elements necessary for the building of a new northern nation, and the prospect of assisting its creation was the spur of his Canadian career.
Union of the colonies was the first and most important step towards the attainment of a national existence. It was the essential foundation for everything else. But McGee did not overlook other and subsidiary policies necessary for the same end. That on which he had laid most emphasis was the development of a broad-minded national spirit which would sponge out from politics the influence of sectarian and sectional interests. Tolerance of the differences of race and creed must, he argued, be the corner stone of the Dominion. There was need of emphasizing this doctrine, for the parochialism of colonial government and the seclusion of colonial society tended to shut out the healthy air of large affairs, and develop a pettiness of mind and an intolerance of spirit. The differences between the French and the English—differences of race and creed—seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle to the emergence of a national community embracing them all. But McGee was not despondent over such differences. He believed that the task of the new nationality was to reconcile them through toleration. In 1865, in St. John, he declared that "the bilingual line which divides us socially is one of the difficulties of the government of the country. But though a difficulty it is by no means a serious danger, unless it were to be aggravated by a sense of injustice, inflicted either by the local French majority on the English minority, or by the English majority on the French minority. So long as we respect in Canada the rights of minorities, told either by tongue or creed, we are safe, for so long it will be possible for us to be united; but when we cease to respect those rights, we will be in the full tide towards that madness which the ancients considered the gods sent to those whom they wished to destroy."
It is always difficult to determine accurately the influence of a political educator. There is no exception in the case of McGee. But there is not the slightest doubt that his effect on the colonial mind was very considerable. While he was expounding throughout the country his great cause, a number of young and able men were growing to maturity who later bore eloquent testimony to the penetrating influence of his teaching. The prominent members of this group—H. J. Morgan, Charles Mair, R. J. Haliburton, G. T. Denison, and W. A. Foster—formed a few years after McGee's death the "Canada First" party, dedicated to the task of advancing the cause of Canadian nationality. In this brilliant party, McGee left disciples to champion all that he had projected. In 1871, their ideas and visions found expression in a lecture of W. A. Foster, entitled Canada First, or Our New Nationality. Foster gave to McGee the premier position among those instrumental in arousing a Canadian national idealism. He paid the warm homage of himself and his associates in a passage remarkable alike for its passionate eloquence and for its unstinted admiration of the man who inspired it:
There is a name I would fain approach with befitting reverence, for it casts athwart memory the shadow of all those qualities that man admires in man. It tells of one in whom the generous enthusiasm of youth was but hallowed by the experiences of cultured manhood; of one who lavished the warm love of an Irish heart on the land of his birth, yet gave a loyal and true affection to the land of his adoption; who strove with all the power of genius to convert the stagnant pool of politics into a stream of living water; who dared to be national in the face of provincial selfishness, and impartially liberal in the teeth of sectarian strife; who from Halifax to Sandwich sowed broadcast the seeds of a higher national life, and with persuasive eloquence drew us closer together as a people, pointing out to each what was good in the other, wreathing our sympathies and blending our hopes; yes! one who breathed into our new Dominion the spirit of a proud self-reliance, and first taught Canadians to respect themselves. Was it a wonder that a cry of agony rang throughout the land when murder, foul and most unnatural, drank the life-blood of Thomas D'Arcy McGee?
The memory and influence of McGee lived not merely in the counsels of the "Canada First" party, but in the efforts of Canadian statesmen in succeeding years to make Canada strong within herself. Even when leaders appeared who may have forgotten his name and had not heard in the legislature or on the public platform his silver speech, their work for the completion of Canadian autonomy was but a fulfilment of what he had advocated. Canada as a self-governing nation, linked fraternally to Britain and other parts of the Empire, was McGee's goal for the Canadian people. Since Confederation they have been steadily advancing towards it, and thus paying homage to the strength and vision of McGee's ideals.
McGee has importance in Canadian history for other reasons than his statesmanship. He holds no mean place in Canadian literature. Historical myth puts into the mouth of Wolfe the remark that he would sooner have written Gray's "Elegy" than take Quebec. The poet may be greater than the soldier, and similarly the literary artist may be placed above the statesman; yet statecraft has drawn fervid minds from poetry to political action. It drew McGee. While, in temperament and aspiration, he was a man of letters, so resistless was the attraction of politics that in it he expended most of his energies. But any account of his life which would leave out of consideration McGee as a littérateur would be incomplete. Something has already been said about his oratory. A native oratory was one of the most distinctive elements in his equipment as he started on the path to fame. Yet from the outset he used his pen more frequently than his tongue. From his first arrival in America to his death, he wrote continuously prose and poetry.
Most of this literary output found expression in the journals with which he had been connected, but he left to his name a goodly number of volumes dealing with historical and biographical subjects. Of these two have already been mentioned as contributing to the cause of Canadian Confederation, Notes on Federal Government Past and Present and Speeches on British American Union. All the others deal with Irish history and biography, which next to living political causes engaged McGee's imagination. The most noted of these books was his Popular History of Ireland, on which he had begun earnest labour in 1858, but which exacting political activities had prevented him from finishing till 1863. On many an evening within these years, he would retire to his room from the battles of parliamentary debate and, forgetful for the time being of Canadian problems, would trace out the struggle of the Vikings for Ireland or some other dramatic phase of Irish history.