ame party now ruled both in Ottawa
and in Winnipeg. The province would not restore the system of
state-aided separate schools, but amendments to the provincial law were
effected which removed the more serious grievances of the minority.
Provision was made for religious teaching in the last half-hour of the
school day, when authorized by the trustees or requested by the parents
of a specified minimum of pupils. Any religious denomination might
provide such teaching, upon days to be arranged. Where the attendance
of Roman Catholic children reached twenty-five in rural and forty in
urban schools, a Catholic teacher should be engaged upon petition, and
equally a non-Catholic teacher should be engaged for a Protestant
minority similarly situated. Where ten pupils spoke French or any
other language than English as their native tongue, bi-lingual teaching
should be provided. In the ordinary work of the school the children
were not to be divided on denominational lines, and the schools were to
remain public schools in every sense.

The settlement was accepted generally in the country as a reasonable
ending of the strife--as the best that could be done in the {172}
circumstances. Edward Blake, counsel for the Catholic minority,
declared it more advantageous than any legislation which could have
been secured by coercion. Speaking in the House of Commons (March
1897) in defence of the settlement, Mr Laurier again declared his
doctrine, 'that the smallest measure of conciliation was far preferable
to any measure of coercion.' The settlement, he continued, was not as
advantageous to the minority as he would have desired; 'still, after
six long years of agitation, when the passions of men had been roused
to the highest pitch, it was not possible to obtain more, nor for the
Government of Manitoba to concede more, under present circumstances.'

By the Catholic authorities, however, the compromise was not accepted.
They denounced it as sanctioning a system of mixed and neutral schools
which the Church had condemned, and as sacrificing to fanaticism the
sacred rights of the minority. Archbishop Langevin vigorously attacked
the settlement and all the parties to it, and some of his brother
ecclesiastics in Quebec agreed with him. Voters in by-elections were
told that they had to choose between Christ and Satan, between bishop
and erring politician. The {173} leading Liberal newspaper of Quebec
City, _L'Electeur_, was formally i