An incident soon occurred which showed how ready was McGee to sacrifice his own ambitions for the cause he eloquently pleaded. In June, John A. Macdonald grappled with the task of forming the first ministry of the Dominion which was to be proclaimed on July 1. His difficulties were acute. Cartier, with Gallic petulance, insisted upon having in the cabinet three French-Canadian representatives. The Protestant minority of Lower Canada, with Galt as leader, also demanded representation. McGee, as the most distinguished of the Irish Roman Catholics, and as one of the most influential champions of federation, was unquestionably entitled to office. Thus there would have been five ministers from the province of Quebec. But Howland and McDougall, reformers from the upper province who supported Macdonald, demanded that Ontario, in virtue of its larger population, should have one more member than Quebec. To satisfy all parties would mean that Ontario and Quebec should have between them eleven cabinet seats. With two representatives from each of the maritime provinces the cabinet would in the estimation of Macdonald be unworkably large. So much was he repelled by the prospect that he was on the point of advising the governor-general to send for Brown when Tupper and McGee volunteered to facilitate matters by declining office. One of the two Nova Scotian members might then be a representative of the Roman Catholics, and Tupper proposed Edward Kenny of Halifax as a suitable man. Macdonald accepted this generous offer, which on his own confession enabled him to patch together the first cabinet of the Dominion. The sacrifice on the part of McGee and Tupper was considerable. They were men in that lusty prime of life when the passion for building a career is strong. Both had worked for confederation with a zeal exceeded by none. For McGee an office in the first cabinet of the Dominion, whose emergence he had long heralded, would have been a deep satisfaction. His mind was charged with plans for the strengthening of the young nation. All the imaginative schemes which the "Canada First" party later championed were in his thoughts, and would have found in him an eloquent exponent. Yet he stepped aside from such prospects of attaining a certain distinction, without the slightest attempt to bargain for place or office, and the self-denial was the keener in that his pecuniary means were slender.