e general election, and Lord Dufferin was
governor-general, Sir Charles Tupper considered the subject of
sufficient constitutional importance to bring it before the house of
commons, where Sir Wilfrid Laurier, then premier, defended the course of
the governor-general. The secretary of state for the colonies also
approved in general terms of the principles which, as the
governor-general explained in his despatches, had governed his action in
this delicate matter.

On Sir Charles Tapper's defeat at the elections, Mr. Laurier became
first minister of a Liberal administration, in which positions were
given to Sir Oliver Mowat, so long premier of Ontario, to Mr. Blair,
premier of New Brunswick, to Mr. Fielding, premier of Nova Scotia, and
eventually to Mr. Sifton, the astute attorney-general of Manitoba. Sir
Richard Cartwright and Sir Louis Davies--to give the latter the title
conferred on him in the Diamond Jubilee year--both of whom had been in
the foremost rank of the Liberal party for many years, also took office
in the new administration; but Mr. Mills, versed above most Canadian
public men in political and constitutional knowledge, was not brought in
until some time later, when Sir Oliver Mowat, the veteran minister of
justice, was appointed to the lieutenant-governorship of Ontario. A
notable acquisition was Mr. Tarte, who had acquired much influence in
French Canada by his irrepressible energy, and who was placed over the
department of public works.

When the school question came to be discussed in 1897, during the first
session of the new parliament, the premier explained to the house that,
whilst he had always maintained "that the constitution of this country
gave to this parliament and government the right and power to interfere
with the school legislation of Manitoba, it was an extreme right and
reserved power to be exercised only when other means had been
exhausted." Believing then that "it was far better to obtain concessions
by negotiation than by coercion," he had, as soon as he came into
office, communicated with the Manitoba government on the subject, and
had "as a result succeeded in making arrangements which gave the French
Catholics of the province religious teaching in their schools and the
protection of their language," under the conditions set forth in a
statute expressly passed for the purpose by the legislature of
Manitoba[7]. The premier at the same time admitted that "the settlement
was not acce