Brunswick, and, a few months later, Clifford Sifton of Manitoba.
The Ministry was the strongest in individual capacity that the
Dominion had yet possessed. The prestige of the provincial
leaders, all men of long experience and tested shrewdness,
strengthened the Administration in quarters where it otherwise
would have been weak, for there had been many who doubted whether
the untried Liberal party could provide capable administrators.
There had also been many who doubted the expediency of making
Prime Minister a French-Canadian Catholic. Such doubters were
reassured by the presence of Mowat and Fielding, until the Prime
Minister himself had proved the wisdom of the choice. There were
others who admitted Laurier's personal charm and grace but
doubted whether he had the political strength to control a party
of conflicting elements and to govern a country where different
race and diverging religious and sectional interests set men at
odds. Here again time proved such fears to be groundless. Long
before Laurier's long term of office had ended, any distrust was
transformed into the charge of his opponents that he played the
dictator. His courtly manners were found not to hide weakness but
to cover strength.

The first task of the new Government was to settle the Manitoba
school question. Negotiations which were at once begun with the
provincial Government were doubtless made easier by the fact that
the same party was in power at Ottawa and at Winnipeg, but it was
not this fact alone which brought agreement. The Laurier
Government, unlike its predecessor, did not insist on the
restoration of separate schools. It accepted a compromise which
retained the single system of public schools, but which provided
religious teaching in the last half hour of school and, where