g 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.

Mackenzie gave the country honest and efficient administration. Among
his most important achievements were the reform of elections by the
introduction of the secret ballot and the requirement that elections
should be held on a single day instead of being spread over weeks,
a measure of local option in controlling the liquor traffic, and
the establishment of a Canadian Supreme Court and the Royal Military
College--the Canadian West Point. But fate and his own limitations were
against him. He was too absorbed in the details of administration to
have time for the work of a party leader. In his policy of constructing
the Canadian Pacific as a government road, after Allan had resigned his
charter, he manifested a caution and a slowness that brought British
Columbia to the verge of secession. But it was chiefly the world-wide
depression that began in his first year of office, 1873, which proved
his undoing. Trade was stagnant, bankruptcies multiplied, and acute
suffering occurred among the poor in the larger cities. Mackenzie had no
solution to offer except patience and economy; and the Opposition were
freer to frame an enticing policy. The country was turning toward a high
tariff as the solution of its ills. Protection had not hitherto been a
party issu