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 acceptable to certain dignitaries of the church to which he belonged"; but subsequently the Pope published an encyclical advising acceptance of the concessions made to the Manitoba Catholics, while claiming at the same time that these concessions were inadequate, and expressing the hope that full satisfaction would be obtained ere long from the Manitoba government. Since the arrangement of this compromise, no strenuous or effective effort has been made to revive the question as an element of political significance in party contests. Even in Manitoba itself, despite the defeat of the Greenway government, which was responsible for the Manitoba school act of 1890, and the coming into office of Mr. Hugh John Macdonald, the son of the great Conservative leader, there has been no sign of the least intention to depart from the legislation arranged by Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1897 as, in his opinion, the best possible compromise under the difficult conditions surrounding a most embarrassing question.