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.