Racial and religious passions, once aroused, soon found new fuel to feed upon. Honore Mercier, a brilliant but unscrupulous leader who had ridden to power in the province of Quebec on the Riel issue, roused Protestant ire by restoring estates which had been confiscated at the conquest in 1763 to the Jesuits and other Roman Catholic authorities, in proportions which the act provided were to be determined by "Our Holy Father the Pope." In Ontario restrictions began to be imposed on the freedom of French-Canadian communities on the border to make French the sole or dominant tongue in the schoolroom. A little later the controversy was echoed in Manitoba in the repeal by a determined Protestant majority of the denominational school privileges hitherto enjoyed by the Roman Catholic minority. Economic discontent was widespread. It was a time of low and falling prices. Farmers found the American market barred, the British market flooded, the home market stagnant. The factories stimulated by the "N. P." lacked the growing market they had hoped for. In the West climatic conditions not yet understood, the monopoly of the Canadian Pacific, and the competition of the States to the south, which still had millions of acres of free land, brought settlement to a standstill. From all parts of Canada the "exodus" to the United States continued until by 1890 there were in that country more than one-third as many people of Canadian birth or descent as in Canada itself. It was not surprising that in these extremities men were prepared to make trial of drastic remedies. Nor was it surprising that it was beyond the borders of Canada itself that they sought the unity and the prosperity they had not found at home. Many looked to Washington, some for unrestricted trade, a few for political union. Others looked to London, hoping for a revival of the old imperial tariff preferences or for some closer political union which would bring commercial advantages in its train.