surprise to Sir Wilfrid, who
had considered that he was simply carrying out the agreement reached
unanimously in 1875. The amendment satisfied all the malcontents of
his party in parliament, but the controversy continued outside. The
more extreme opponents of separate schools would see no difference
between the new clause and the old. Archbishop Langevin strongly
denounced the {245} amendment; but the fire soon cooled. Today fewer
than one school in a hundred in the two provinces is a separate school.

Throughout this period of rapid growth the Liberal party maintained its
place in power. The country was prosperous and content and the party
chieftain invincible. The general elections of 1904 turned chiefly on
railway issues. The criticisms of the Opposition, many of them well
grounded, proved unavailing. The contest ended in a victory for the
Government with a majority of sixty seats in the House and of fifty
thousand votes in the country. The results presented the usual
discrepancies between electoral votes and parliamentary representation.
Though the Liberals had only 54,000 votes in Nova Scotia, as against
46,000 for the Conservatives, they captured all the eighteen seats.
Prince Edward Island, giving the Liberals a popular majority, returned
three Conservatives to one Liberal. Ontario cast 217,000 Conservative
and 213,000 Liberal votes and returned forty-eight Conservatives and
thirty-eight Liberals. An untoward incident of the elections was the
defeat of Mr R. L. Borden in Halifax. The leader of the Opposition had
won universal respect, {246} and it was to the satisfaction of
opponents as well as followers that another seat was shortly found for
him.

In the general elections of four years later (1908) no single issue was
dominant. The Opposition alleged 'graft' and corruption, and charged
ministers and ex-ministers with breach of the eighth and neighbouring
commandments. Government officials, too, they said, were guilty of
extravagance and fraud. Timber limits, contracts, land deals, figured
in still further scandals. The ministerial forces replied in the usual
way, claiming in some cases that there was no ground for the
allegations, and in others that they themselves had intervened to put a
stop to the practices inherited from previous administrations. They
carried the war into Africa by counter-charges against leading members
of the Opposition. The air was full of scandals and personalities;