The Murky Railway Politics of the 1850s and the Pacific Scandal

It can also be suggested that Macdonald's experiences in the politics of the early- and mid-1850s deeply influenced his later approaches toward national railways. One unfortunate lesson was played out in the Pacific Scandal, where for political purposes he willingly accepted generous amounts of monied electoral aid from financier and shipping magnate Hugh Allan, to whom the first transcontinental railway charter did go, after all. That particular bit of crony capitalism--of political entrepreneurship on Allan's part--is little more than an expansive extension of the murky railway politics of the 1850s.

--J.J. Ben Forster, "First Spikes: Railways in Macdonald's Early Political Career," in Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies, ed. Patrice Dutil and Roger Hall (Toronto: Dundurn, 2014), 185.