Bitter were the complaints of the Opposition against such juggling. McGee's voice joined the chorus of denunciation. He slashed the Cartier-Macdonald group for pushing difficulties in the path of the Brown government, and even accused the governor of an unseemly partiality for Macdonald. His heavy-fisted criticisms aroused intense resentment in the government ranks, and every effort was made to discredit him. The press was wheeled into the sordid task of endeavouring to damage his reputation and ruin his public life. The Toronto _Leader_ and the _Catholic Witness_ of Montreal were truceless in their attacks. Much was made out of the fact that he had been a fugitive rebel, and the hostile Catholic press endeavoured to prove that his orthodoxy was in question. Even an effort was made to get the board of Catholic bishops to condemn him publicly. Innuendoes were thrown out that he had some association with a revolutionary society which threatened the overthrow of Canadian institutions. John A. Macdonald was led to describe him as a rebel in his own country, who had come to Canada to propagate rebellion. Indeed, the party of Macdonald and Cartier procured a complete file of McGee's New York _Nation_, in order that they might be able to taunt him with the revolutionary and anti-British sentiments which he had expressed between the years 1848 and 1850. If he had been a man of ordinary ability and troubled with super-sensitiveness, McGee would not have survived this ordeal of his first parliamentary year. But ten years of American journalism had hardened him sufficiently to go buoyantly and successfully through the disagreeable rough-and-tumble of Canadian politics. His rebel antecedents did not encumber him. He boldly defended his revolutionary career in Ireland on the ground that he had rebelled against conditions which did not exist in Canada, and against which any Canadian would have rebelled. As to his position in his new home, he was emphatic in his profession of faith: "I am as loyal to the institutions under which I live in Canada as any Tory of the old or new schools."