mastery over all obstacles." It was an admirable creed for those who looked to Confederation as the supreme goal for the colonies. CHAPTER V CONFEDERATION AND FENIANISM On the 10th of October, 1864, the historic Quebec conference met. It was a fitting time and a fitting place for the constructive work of colonial statesmen. October is the final harvest month of the Canadian year. The fruits and crops of the summer are garnered, and in no place does nature celebrate the event with more gorgeous colouring than in Quebec. Amid the magic charm and beauty of French Canada's old capital, the conference undertook the arduous labour of carrying into execution the visions of the previous years. McGee's feelings on the occasion were vivid. The cause which he had so faithfully championed and the hopes which he had so long cherished were now to triumph. The new nationality for whose emergence he had laboured was to be fitted with a constitution. The story of the painstaking sessions of the conference belongs to the general history of Confederation, and need not be chronicled. In the debates and fashioning of resolutions, McGee's part was less prominent than that of many men who had not laboured as much in the heat of the day. His one recorded motion was to secure the preservation of denominational schools. He moved that to the clause which assigned education to the control of the local legislatures be added the words, "saving the rights and privileges which the Protestant or Catholic minority in both Canadas may possess as to their denominational schools at the time when the constitutional act goes into operation". Throughout the discussions he watched with jealous care the maintenance of minority and local rights, and made the significant confession the following February in defending the Quebec resolutions before the Canadian parliament: "If we had failed to secure every possible constitutional guarantee for minorities, east and west .... I myself could have been no party to the conclusions of the late conference. But .... in securing the power of disallowance, under circumstances, which might warrant it, to the general government, in giving the appointment of judges and local governors to the general government, and in expressly providing in the constitution for the educational rights of the minority, we had taken every possible guarantee ... against the oppression of a sectional minority by a sectional majority."