A Conservative majority of
thirty or forty seemed to assure Macdonald another five-year
lease of power. Yet within a year the Pacific Scandal had driven
him from office and overwhelmed him in disgrace.
The Pacific Scandal occurred in connection with the financing of
the railway which the Dominion Government had promised British
Columbia, when that province entered Confederation in 1871, would
be built through to the Pacific coast within ten years. The
bargain was good politics but poor business. It was a rash
undertaking for a people of three and a half millions, with a
national revenue of less than twenty million dollars, to pledge
itself to build a railway through the rocky wilderness north of
Lake Superior, through the trackless plains and prairies of the
middle west, and across the mountain ranges that barred the
coast. Yet Macdonald had sufficient faith in the country, in
himself, and in the happy accidents of time--a confidence that
won him the nickname of "Old Tomorrow"--to give the pledge. Then
came the question of ways and means. At first the Government
planned to build the road. On second thoughts, however, it
decided to follow the example set by the United States in the
construction of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, and to
entrust the work to a private company liberally subsidized with
land and cash.
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