progress at Rome, the terms of the Manitoba school
settlement were made public in November, 1896. The settlement
embodied substantial concessions in fact, but Archbishop Langevin
and his fellow clerics at once fell upon it. Langevin denounced it
as a farce. To Cardinal Begin it appeared an "indefensible
abandonment of the best established, most sacred rights of the
Catholic minority." A regime of religious proscription was
inaugurated. Public men were subjected to intimidation; Liberal
newspapers were banned, among them L'Electeur, the chief organ of
the party. The bishops destroyed themselves by their violence. Rome
does not lightly quarrel with governments and prime ministers. By
March Mgr. Merry Del Val was in Canada as apostolic delegate; and
though care was taken to save the faces of the bishops, their
concerted assaults upon the government ceased. Laurier had never
again to face the embattled bishops, which is not the same thing as
saying that they ceased to take a hand in politics. As Professor
Skelton truly remarks: "The Archbishop of Montreal, Monseigneur Paul
Bruchesi, who kept in close touch with Wilfrid Laurier, soon proved
that sunny ways and personal pressure would go further than the
storms and thunderbolts of the doughty old warrior of Three Rivers."
With the bishops silenced, Laurier's foes in Quebec found the issue
valueless to them. Their political associates from other provinces,
after the disappointment of 1896, would not consent to a revival of
the question. One of the party leaders declared he would not touch
it with a forty-foot pole. Tupper formally erased it from the party
calendar. The question remained quiescent; but Laurier always
remained in fear of its re-emergence; and with cause. The
resentments it left went underground and later had a revival in the
passionate zeal with which the Quebec clergy embraced the faith of
nationalism as preached by Bourassa. In one respect the school
question and its settlement proved useful. It was the exhibit
unfailingly displayed to prove upon needed occasions that the charge
was quite untrue that in directing party policy Laurier was unduly
sensitive to Quebec sentiment. In effect it was said: "Laurier made
Quebec swallow in 1896; now it is your turn"--a formula which
finally became tedious through repetition.

SUPREME IN QUEBEC

The second issue which appeared for a moment to put Laurier's grip
on Quebec in peril was the South African war. Looking back