Canadian Pacific would go to the wall, the Conservative party would go with it, and all Canada would be in a panic. Sir John did not want to smash Canada nor the Conservative party, and he explained that he was personally in favour of the loan and would try to get his Cabinet and party united in an effort to put it through the House. This was enough for Mr. Pope, who knew Sir John’s powers, and at two o’clock in the morning Pope returned to the well-nigh despairing Stephen and the rest, and uttered simply the tonic words, “Well, he will do it.” In the meantime Sir Charles Tupper, who, while still holding the portfolio of Minister of Railways, was in London as High Commissioner for Canada, had been cabled for to come to the rescue. He left for Ottawa at once and, on arrival in Canada, found everybody at their wits’ end. He got Mr. Miall, the expert Government accountant, and Mr. Collingwood Schreiber, the highly respected and able Government engineer, to work on the Railway Company’s books in Montreal. They reported everything satisfactory, and Mr. Schreiber, whose word went a long way, recommended the granting of the loan. But there was still the task of getting the Cabinet united on the subject, and the caucus of the Government members in the House into a favourable and unanimous attitude. Fortunately for the Government and the Canadian Pacific and the country at large, the Cabinet had in its number the rare personalities of the magnetic and diplomatic Sir John Macdonald and the formidable, fearless Sir Charles Tupper, who made a sort of irresistible combination. Sir John could sway by the conciliatory eloquence and the appealing personal touches which held the devoted allegiance of his party to the “old Chieftain” through many extraordinary vicissitudes in his long career. Sir Charles could marshal arguments with the consummate forensic power of which he was a master, and thus became a veritable regiment of storm troops to carry his points and reach his objective. These two men solidified their own party and, despite a fierce resistance from their opponents in the House, the Bill authorizing the loan was carried, as Sir Charles said, “at the point of the bayonet.”