objected to the selection of an European umpire, and sought, indeed, to select for the presidency of the board of arbitration a jurist from the South American republics. In the judgment of the British commissioners it was useless to settle only a few minor questions where the balance of advantage would go to the United States. They, therefore, reported that they were unwilling to proceed "until the boundary question had been disposed of, either by agreement or reference to arbitration."

It is within the truth to say that the spirit of Congress was adverse to any liberal agreement with Canada either for the extension of trade, or for the adjustment of other disturbing questions. If Mr. McKinley and Sir Wilfrid Laurier could have determined the issue of the negotiations, a large and beneficent arrangement would probably have resulted. But Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his colleagues learned what Sir John Macdonald in consequence of his long enduring term of office in Canada so well understood, they learned that the Republican leaders of the United States are stubbornly and invincibly protectionist, that American policy is essentially exclusive and autocratic, that the American temper resents official dealing with foreign communities, and that a treaty-making prerogative which depends for its efficiency upon a legislative body independent of the executive, and subject to all the passions and prejudices of an arrogant democracy, is at most a feeble and timid organ of Government.

IT

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SCHOOL QUESTION

T is doubtful if the Equal Rights organization left any abiding impress upon the legislation of Ontario or Quebec, but to that movement can be traced the abolition of denominational schools, and of the use of French as an official language in Manitoba. The movement began in an agitation to force disallowance of an act of the Quebec Legislature, and ended in an agitation to prevent interference with an act of the Manitoba Legislature. It is true also that the arguments which influenced Parliament against disallowance of the Jesuit Estates' Act were very much the arguments which protected the Legislature and people of Manitoba from interference by the federal authority. The first word in an agitation which shook all Canada in its stormy progress, and finally overturned a Government at Ottawa, was spoken in 1889 by the Hon. Joseph Martin, Attorney-General of Manitoba, at a meeting in Portage la Prairie, at which he and Mr. D'Alton McCarthy were the chief speakers. Mr. McCarthy was fresh from attack upon the Separate School system of Ontario, and inspired by the brief but formidable ascendancy of the Equal Rights movement. When he had advanced his familiar arguments against ecclesiastical influence

in Canadian politics, the evils of a sectarian school system, and the denationalizing tendency of dual language, Mr. Martin intervened with the practical and far-reaching announcement that the provincial Government had determined to abolish the official use of French in the Legislature and courts of the province, and to establish a national and non-sectarian school system. He added that if the Constitution prevented the enactment of the legislation the provincial Government would appeal to the Imperial authorities for its amendment.' The statement was generally unexpected, and was as disturbing as it was revolutionary. The few who had thought upon the question had the general impression that Separate Schools in Manitoba were protected by constitutional guarantees as in Ontario and Quebec, and that no Government subject to the common political influences would be likely to disturb the system. There was likewise the higher consideration that a constitutional compact should not be lightly violated, and that the Manitoba Act of Union, like the Confederation Settlement, was a conclusive determination, in so far as the acts applied, of the rights of the religious minorities to maintain a Separate School system, and to devote their proportion of the school taxes to the support of denominational education.2

1 Speech of the Hon. Joseph Martin at Portage la Prairie, August 5th, 1889.

2 Before Mr. Martin spoke at Portage la Prairie there were intimations more or less direct of the intention of the Manitoba Govern

The Manitoba Government, however, proceeded to give legislative effect to Mr. Martin's declaration, and at the session of 1890 passed acts abolishing the Roman Catholic schools and establishing a nonsectarian system of education throughout the province. Legal proceedings were at once instituted on behalf of the Roman Catholics to determine the constitutionality of this legislation, and a public issue of the first consequence arose in provincial and in national politics. The demand for disallowance of the provincial statutes was refused at Ottawa, and it remained for the courts to determine if the acts were within the competence of the Legislature, and ment to abolish Separate Schools and the official use of French. The first distinct announcement of the Greenway programme appeared in the Winnipeg Sun. A despatch to the Toronto Mail of August 2nd, 1889, said, "The Sun to-night says the next session of the local Legislature promises to be the most interesting and exciting ever held in the province. The local Government have resolved to take the bull by the horns and to accept Mr. D'Alton McCarthy's advice of adopting a fight with the ballot. Thus it is understood to be the settled policy of the Government to introduce a measure at the next session abolishing dual languages, that is, the use of the French language in the province. Documents and statutes will be printed only in the English language. The Government have also decided to grapple with the Separate School question, and means will be advised to knock them out, despite the reading of the law bearing on the question. An educational measure revolutionizing the whole system in the province will be introduced. The Board of Education will be wiped out and the portfolio of Minister of Education will likely be taken by one of the present Ministers, as there is no desire to create a fifth salaried Minister. He will have a deputy, who will perform duties very similar to those of the Superintendent of Education. By a new act the position of Superintendent of Education will be wiped out. It is understood that he will receive notice to that effect in a few days."

if so, whether or not the federal power could intervene to restore to the Roman Catholics of the province the privileges of which they had been deprived.

There was no public system of education in Manitoba prior to the organization of the province in 1870, and such denominational schools as existed were supported by the voluntary contributions of the various communions. But in 1871 a system of education was established, which was distinctly denominational, and under which the Catholics of Manitoba received as liberal treatment as the Catholics of Ontario and the Protestants of Quebec. This system, as stated, was abolished in 1890, and succeeded by the acts whose constitutionality was now to be determined. The first sub-section of the twenty-second section of the Manitoba Act declares that the province shall not have power to pass any legislation which "shall prejudicially affect any right or privilege with respect to denominational schools which any class of persons have by law or practice in the province at the Union." This was doubtless intended to give a constitutional guarantee for Separate Schools in Manitoba; but when the appeal taken by the Catholic minority had made its way through the Canadian courts to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, it was there decided that the legislation of 1890 was constitutional inasmuch as the only right or privilege which Roman Catholics then enjoyed was the right or privilege of