districts where schools of various classes have been provided for their instruction.  They are systematically taught farming and other industrial pursuits; agents and instructors visit the reserves from time to time to see that the interests of the Indians are protected; and the sale of spirits is especially forbidden in the territories chiefly with the view of guarding the Indians from such baneful influences.  The policy of the government for the past thirty years has been on the whole most satisfactory from every point of view.  In the course of a few decades the Indians of the prairies will be an agricultural population, able to support themselves.

The Mackenzie ministry established a supreme court, or general court of appeal, for Canada.  The election laws were amended so as to abolish public nominations and property qualification for members of the house of commons, as well as to provide for vote by ballot and simultaneous polling at a general election—­a wise provision which had existed for some years in the province of Nova Scotia.  An act passed by Sir John Macdonald’s government for the trial of controverted elections by judges was amended, and a more ample and effective provision made for the repression and punishment of bribery and corruption at elections.  A force of mounted police was organised for the maintenance of law and order in the North-west territories.  The enlargement of the St. Lawrence system of canals was vigorously prosecuted in accordance with the report of a royal commission, appointed in 1870 by the previous administration to report on this important system of waterways.  A Canada temperance act—­known by the name of Senator Scott, who introduced it when secretary of state—­was passed to allow electors in any county to exercise what is known as “local option”; that is to say, to decide by their votes at the polls whether they would permit the sale of intoxicating liquors within their respective districts.  This act was declared by the judicial committee of the privy council to be constitutional and was extended in the course of time to very many counties of the several provinces; but eventually it was found quite impracticable to enforce the law, and the great majority of those districts of Ontario and Quebec, which had been carried away for a time on a great wave of moral reform to adopt the act, decided by an equally large vote to repeal it.  The agitation for the extension of this law finally merged into a wide-spread movement among the temperance people of the Dominion for the passage of a prohibitory liquor law by the parliament of Canada.  In 1898 the question was submitted to the electors of the provinces and territories by the Laurier government.  The result was a majority of only 14,000 votes in favour of prohibition out of a total vote of 543,049, polled throughout the Dominion.  The province of Quebec declared itself against the measure by an overwhelming vote.  The temperance people then demanded that