This document is symptomatic of McGee's thought. In the _New Era_, he had painted the vision of a united British North America, but he had not, while a journalist, come to close grips with a scheme of union. His year of parliamentary experiences had brought him nearer to constitutional needs, and his co-operation with Dorion in the projection of a definite plan was the result. Although he later departed from the details of this programme, to the principle of federation he remained faithful. Such was not the case with Dorion. It was the irony of his career that the confederation scheme of 1864, under which Canada grew into lusty young nationhood, found in him its severest critic. In the years following 1859 McGee continued as zealously as before to plead in parliament and on public platforms the cause of federal union. He looked even far beyond the mere federation of the two Canadas. With an extended foresight he advocated a union of all the colonies. In 1860, in the debates on Brown's resolutions, favouring a federal union of the two provinces--to which Brown had now turned--McGee argued that much more desirable would be a union of all the North American provinces. Common interests demanded it. The existing arrangement with its tariff barriers between the colonies hampered trade and economic development. Union would widen intercolonial markets and stimulate the entire material progress of the colonies, while without union they must lag far behind the United States in the working of their natural resources. But federation was imperative for another reason. It was a necessary means of attaining for the colonies a national existence. McGee fervidly looked forward to a day, not distant, "when we should be known not as Upper or Lower Canadians, Nova Scotians, or New Brunswickers, but as members of a nation designated as the Six United Provinces." The establishment of a federal state for the nurturing of a British North American nationality was the shining goal that he held before Canadians. The wider union would not merely solve the political difficulties of the Canadas, but would insure the great destiny of all the colonies.