Sir John Macdonald had resigned without waiting for a vote of the House and no one to this day knows just how it would have divided. But the feeling in the country was hot and, like a wise man, he bowed to the inevitable. He said that someday the people would understand and call him back to power. The fact that they did call him back five years later astounded his political foes, one of whom had said in the House, during the debate, that Sir John “had fallen like Lucifer, never to rise again.” But he did rise, to the surprise of many. The fact that he came back later on was due, in some degree, to his personal magnetism. But it was also due to the fact that people knew that Sir John had not profited in any personal way and that he and Sir Hugh Allan had become almost obsessed with the idea that the continuance of Sir John in office at that time was absolutely necessary to the opening up and development of Canada. They acted accordingly, as if the end they had in view justified the methods they adopted. Moreover, it was shown that Sir John had definitely told Allan that he would not give the railway contract to him, but to an amalgamation of the two companies. Allan said in connection with the whole matter: “The plans I propose are the best for the interests of the Dominion and in urging them I am doing a patriotic action.” In the meantime, when Sir John resigned, Mackenzie took office and, in a general election shortly afterwards, swept the country. Sir Hugh Allan, unable to raise capital in the presence of the political earthquake and the business depression, threw up the charter for building the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a new programme had to be adopted. For the time being the curtain had to be rung down on the gigantic project. CHAPTER IV The Chariot Wheels Drag The name of Alexander Mackenzie, the stonemason, who succeeded Sir John Macdonald as Premier of Canada in 1873, deserves to be uttered with profound respect. By the most intense application to work and the most diligent use of his opportunities in the right way, he rose steadily, not only in circumstances, but in the esteem of his fellow-countrymen, till he attained the highest office in the gift of the Canadian people. Born in the Highlands of Scotland, he came out to Canada as a young stonecutter. He returned some thirty years later to the romantic scenes of his childhood as the Premier of the Dominion, a credit alike to the land of his birth and the land of his adoption. Once, in my student days, I met him in Winnipeg. He had made the trip to the far West, but was in poor health—a rather pathetic figure, I thought, whose unflinching resistance of down-grade influences had made his public life harder than stonecutting.