Some eighteen months after his election, McGee outlined in four public letters to his Irish-Canadian constituents his views on Canadian parties. They adequately explain why for four years he supported the Opposition, consorting with Dorion, George Brown, and other uncompromising opponents of the Cartier-Macdonald ministry. He attributed to the _Bleus_ an exclusive Canadianism. They had no wish to welcome immigrants, for they dreamed of a French Canada existing isolated, alone, and still French on the map of North America. Their conception of French-Canadian nationality was too narrow to allow the development of a broad conception of Canadian nationality, so essential in a land of warring sects and races. The _Rouges_, on the other hand, were more in touch with modern tendencies, and more disposed to recognize as their Canadian countrymen the newer immigrants who spoke a different tongue and were of another race. In them the Irish Canadians of Lower Canada could find more congenial allies than among the _Bleus_. McGee on this occasion worked in his own fervid gospel of a nationality, which would recognize distinctions of neither race nor creed: "For my own part, I respect every nationality represented on our soil; but yet I hold we should consider them rather as invaluable materials to a desired end, than as finalities themselves. I hope to see the day, or at least the eve of the day, when there will be no other term to our patriotism, but the common name of Canadian, without the prefix of either French or British." He advised his Catholic countrymen in Upper Canada that they support in their section of the province the Reform party of George Brown. Brown was something of a knight errant. He was bold in tilting with abuses, and ever ready to ride about the colony in search of them. McGee was won by Brown's frank, fearless character. Moreover, he believed that the Irish Catholics of Upper Canada could subscribe with little reservation to the Reform leader's principles. They shared with Brown a hostility to the intolerant Toryism of the old school, and entertained his faith in the widest extension of popular suffrage, economy in public expenditure, and reduction in taxation. But there were two issues on which McGee was not in harmony with Brown. He did not believe that the adoption of representation by population would, as Brown so ardently argued, heal the ills of Canadian government. Also, contrary to the belief of the Upper Canadian, he thought that separate religious schools should receive more definite recognition by the provincial legislature. These questions were to arise frequently during his political career, and a statement of his position on them may be conveniently postponed.