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. Two companies were organized with a view to securing the contract, one a Montreal company under Sir Hugh Allan, the foremost Canadian man of business and the head of the Allan steamship fleet, and the other a Toronto company under D. L. Macpherson, who had been concerned in the building of the Grand Trunk. Their rivalry was intense. After the election of 1872 a strong compromise company was formed, with Allan at the head, and to this company the contract was awarded. When Parliament met in 1872, a Liberal member, L. S. Huntington, made the charge that Allan had really been acting on behalf of certain American capitalists and that he had made lavish contributions to the Government campaign fund in the recent election. In the course of the summer these charges were fully substantiated. Allan was proved by his own correspondence, stolen from his solicitor's office, to have spent over $350,000, largely advanced by his American allies, in buying the favor of newspapers and politicians. Nearly half of this amount had been contributed to the Conservative campaign fund, with the knowledge and at the instance of Cartier and Macdonald. Macdonald, while unable to disprove the charges, urged that there was no connection between the contributions and the granting of the charter. But his defense was not heeded. A wave of indignation swept the country; his own supporters in Parliament fell away; and in November, 1873, he resigned. Mackenzie, who was summoned to form a new Ministry, dissolved Parliament and was sustained by a majority of two to one.