In March, 1891, Sir John Macdonald was returned to office for the sixth time since Confederation, but he was not destined to enjoy power long. The winter campaign had been too much for his weakened constitution, and he died on June 6, 1891. No man had been more hated by his political opponents, no man more loved by his political followers. Today the hatred has long since died, and the memory of Sir John Macdonald has become the common pride of Canadians of every party, race, and creed. He had done much to lower the level of Canadian politics; but this fault was forgiven when men remembered his unfailing courage and confidence, his constructive vision and fertility of resource, his deep and unquestioned devotion to his country.
The Conservative party had with difficulty survived the last election. Deprived of the leader who for so long had been half its force, the party could not long delay its break-up. No one could be found to fill Macdonald's place. The helm was taken in turn by J. J. C. Abbott, "the confidential family lawyer of the party," by Sir John Thompson, solid and efficient though lacking in imagination, and by Sir Mackenzie Bowell, an Ontario veteran. Abbott was forced to resign because of ill health; Thompson died in office; and Bowell was forced out by a revolt within the party. Sir Charles Tupper, then High Commissioner in London, was summoned to take up the difficult task. But it proved too great for even his fighting energy. The party was divided. Gross corruption in the awarding of public contracts had been brought to light. The farmers were demanding a lower tariff. The leader of the Opposition was proving to have all the astuteness and the mastery of his party which had marked Macdonald and a courage in his convictions which promised well. Defeat seemed inevitable unless a new issue which had invaded federal politics, the Manitoba school question, should prove more dangerous to the Opposition than to the forces of the Government.
The Manitoba school question was an echo of the racial and religious strife which followed the execution of Riel and in which the Jesuits' Estates controversy was an episode. In the early days of the province, when it was still uncertain which religion would be dominant among the settlers, a system of state-aided denominational schools had been established. In 1890 the Manitoba Government swept this system away and replaced it by a single system of non-sectarian and state-supported schools which were practically the same as the old Protestant schools. Any Roman Catholic who did not wish to send his children to such a school was thus compelled to pay for the maintenance of a parochial school as well as to pay taxes for the public schools. A provision of the Confederation Act, inserted at the wish of the Protestant minority in Quebec, safeguarded the educational privileges of religious minorities. A somewhat similar clause had been inserted in the Manitoba Act of 1870. To this protection the Manitoba minority now appealed. The courts held that the province had the right to pass the law but also that the Dominion Government had the constitutional right to pass remedial legislation restoring in some measure the privileges taken away. The issue was thus forced into federal politics.
A curious situation then developed. The leader of the Government, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, was a prominent Orangeman. The leader of the Opposition, Wilfrid Laurier, was a Roman Catholic. The Government, after a vain attempt to induce the province to amend its measure, decided to pass a remedial act compelling it to restore to the Roman Catholics their rights. The policy of the Opposition leader was awaited with keen expectancy. Strong pressure was brought upon Laurier by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Quebec. Most men expected a temporizing compromise. Yet the leader of the Opposition came out strongly and flatly against the Government's measure. He agreed that a wrong had been done but insisted that compulsion could not right it and promised that, if in power, he would follow the path of conciliation. At once all the wrath of the hierarchy was unloosed upon him, and all its influence was thrown to the support of the Government. Yet when the Liberals blocked the Remedial Bill by obstructing debate until the term of Parliament expired, and forced an election on this issue in the summer of 1896, Quebec gave a big majority to Laurier, while Manitoba stood behind the party which had tried to coerce it. The country over, the Liberals had gained a decisive majority. The day of new leaders and anew policy had dawned at last.
CHAPTER V. THE YEARS OF FULFILMENT
Wilfrid Laurier was summoned to form his first Cabinet in July, 1896. For eighteen years previous to that time the Liberals had sat in what one of their number used to call "the cold shades of Opposition." For half of that term Laurier had been leader of the party, confined to the negative task of watching and criticizing the administration of his great predecessor and of the four premiers who followed in almost as many years. Now he was called to constructive tasks. Fortune favored him by bringing him to power at the very turn of the tide; but he justified fortune's favor by so steering the ship of state as to take full advantage of wind and current. Through four Parliaments, through fifteen years of office, through the time of fruition of so many long-deferred hopes, he was to guide the destinies of the nation.
Laurier began his work by calling to his Cabinet not merely the party leaders in the federal arena but four of the outstanding provincial Liberals—Oliver Mowat, Premier of Ontario, William S. Fielding, Premier of Nova Scotia, Andrew G. Blair, Premier of New Brunswick, and, a few months later, Clifford Sifton of Manitoba. The Ministry was the strongest in individual capacity that the Dominion had yet possessed. The prestige of the provincial leaders, all men of long experience and tested shrewdness, strengthened the Administration in quarters where it otherwise would have been weak, for there had been many who doubted whether the untried Liberal party could provide capable administrators. There had also been many who doubted the expediency of making Prime Minister a French-Canadian Catholic. Such doubters were reassured by the presence of Mowat and Fielding, until the Prime Minister himself had proved the wisdom of the choice. There were others who admitted Laurier's personal charm and grace but doubted whether he had the political strength to control a party of conflicting elements and to govern a country where different race and diverging religious and sectional interests set men at odds. Here again time proved such fears to be groundless. Long before Laurier's long term of office had ended, any distrust was transformed into the charge of his opponents that he played the dictator. His courtly manners were found not to hide weakness but to cover strength.
The first task of the new Government was to settle the Manitoba school question. Negotiations which were at once begun with the provincial Government were doubtless made easier by the fact that the same party was in power at Ottawa and at Winnipeg, but it was not this fact alone which brought agreement. The Laurier Government, unlike its predecessor, did not insist on the restoration of separate schools. It accepted a compromise which retained the single system of public schools, but which provided religious teaching in the last half hour of school and, where numbers warranted, a teacher of the same faith as the pupils. The compromise was violently denounced by the Roman Catholic hierarchy but, except in two cities, where parochial schools were set up, it was accepted by the laity.
With this thorny question out of the way, the Government turned to what it recognized as its greatest task, the promotion of the country's material prosperity. For years industry had been at a standstill. Exports and imports had ceased to expand; railway building had halted; emigrants outnumbered immigrants. The West, the center of so many hopes, the object of so many sacrifices, had not proved the El Dorado so eagerly sought by fortune hunters and home builders. There were little over two hundred thousand white men west of the Great Lakes. Homesteads had been offered freely; but in 1896 only eighteen hundred were taken up, and less than a third of these by Canadians from the East. The stock of the Canadian Pacific was selling at fifty. All but a few had begun to lose faith in the promise of the West.