Meanwhile Mr Laurier had been obliged to face the same difficult issue. He was a sincere Catholic. He sympathized with the desire of his fellow-religionists for schools in which their faith would be cherished, and believed that at the creation of the province all parties had understood that such schools were assured. He knew, too, the power of the Church in Quebec, and the fierceness of the storm that {163} would beat upon him if he opposed its will. Yet he kept a close grip on fact. He saw clearly that any attempt by the Dominion to set up a separate school system, which would have to be operated by a sullen and hostile province, was doomed to failure. He condemned the Government's bludgeoning policy and urged investigation and conciliation by minor amendments. Further than this, in the earlier stages of the agitation, he would not go. In spite of entreaties and threats and taunts from the opposite camps, he remained, like Wellington, 'within the lines of Torres Vedras.' At the session of 1896 the Government introduced its Remedial Bill, providing for the organization and maintenance of distinctly separate schools in Manitoba. The Catholic authorities accepted the bill as in full compliance with their demands, and bent all their energies to secure its adoption. A _mandement_ was issued by all the bishops urging electors to support only candidates who would pledge themselves to restore separate schools. And in January Mr Laurier received a letter written by Father Lacombe in the name of the bishops and published in the newspapers throughout Canada. This letter besought the Liberal leader to support the bill, and warned him that {164} 'if, which may God not grant, you do not believe it to be your duty to accede to our just demands, and if the government which is anxious to give us the promised law is beaten and overthrown while persisting in its policy to the end, I inform you with regret that the episcopacy, like one man, united to the clergy, will rise to support those who may have fallen to defend us.' Mr Laurier met the challenge squarely. In one of his strongest speeches he reviewed the whole tangled issue. He admitted the legal power of Canada to pass and enforce the bill, but denied that the judgment of the Privy Council made such action automatically necessary. It was still the Government's duty to investigate and seek a compromise, not to force through a bill framed in darkness and obstinacy. The minority itself would be more effectually and more permanently benefited by amendments made voluntarily by the province as the result of reasonable compromise. Then he turned to the threats of ecclesiastical hostility: