n-chief, made an
unsuccessful attempt to have these estates granted to himself; but in
the Crown's possession they remained, and fell to the province of
Quebec at Confederation. This settlement had never been accepted. The
bishops contended that the Jesuits' estates should have been returned
to the Church, and the Jesuits, who had come back to Canada in 1842,
asserted their own rights to their ancient lands. Thus the thorny
question as to what disposition should be made of these lands baffled
the provincial authorities until 1888, when Honore Mercier, himself a
pupil of the Jesuits, and now a most aggressively faithful son of the
Church, grappled with the problem, and passed an act embodying a
compromise which had been found acceptable by all parties concerned.
The sum of $400,000 was to be paid in satisfaction of all claims, to be
divided among the Jesuits, the Church authorities, and Laval
University, in proportions to be determined by the Pope. At the same
time $60,000 was voted to Protestant schools to satisfy their demands.

In Quebec the measure was accepted with little discussion. All the
Protestant members {116} in the legislature voted for it. But in
Ontario the heather was soon on fire. It was not merely that the
dispossessed Jesuits, whom some Protestants regarded as the very symbol
and quintessence of clerical intrigue, were thus compensated by the
state, but that the sanction of the Pope had been invoked to give
effect to an act of a British legislature. The Protestant war-chiefs,
D'Alton M'Carthy, Colonel O'Brien, and John Charlton, took up the
tomahawk, and called on the Dominion Government to disallow the act.
But Sir John Macdonald declined to intervene. A resolution in the
House of Commons calling for disallowance was defeated by 188 to 13,
the minority being chiefly Conservatives from Ontario.

In opposing the resolution Mr Laurier congratulated the Government on
its tardy conversion from the vicious doctrine of centralization. The
revolt of its followers from Ontario was the inevitable retribution due
to a party which had pandered to religious prejudices in both
provinces--due to 'that party with a rigid Protestant face turning
towards the west and a devout Catholic face turning towards the east';
and which at the same time had proclaimed the right to disallow any
provincial {117} act. He did not, however, base his position solely on
the plea of provincial rights. In itself the legislati