The policy of protection which Sir John had offered to the people in 1878 was brought into effect during the session of 1879. So completely was his promise fulfilled that the Liberal leader, Mackenzie, declared that Sir John had 'gone the whole hog.' George Brown made a similar admission.[17] Sir John Macdonald, it may be said, always carried out his promises. I never knew him to fail. He was guarded in making them, but if he gave an unconditional promise he was sure to { 118} implement it, no matter at what inconvenience to himself. I have seen this illustrated again and again. The late Sir Richard Cartwright--no very friendly witness--observed in recent times, in his own characteristic fashion: 'I will say this for that old scoundrel John A. Macdonald, that if he once gave you his word, you could rely upon it.'
Sir John had not been long in power when death removed the most implacable of his foes. On May 9, 1880, died George Brown, struck down in his office by the bullet of an assassin. This shocking occurrence, which was due to the act of a discharged printer, had no relation to public affairs.
The fiscal policy having been settled, Sir John Macdonald again turned his attention to the problem of a railway to the Pacific. The Liberal Government, on the ground that the agreement with British Columbia to build the road within ten years was impossible of fulfilment, had not considered Canada bound by it, but had decided to build the railway, not by means of a private company, but as a government work, and to construct it gradually in sections as the progress of settlement and the state of the public treasury might warrant. Sir John Macdonald rejected this piecemeal { 119} policy, and resolved to carry out the original scheme of a great national highway across the continent, to be built as rapidly as possible so as to open up quickly the resources of the Great West.
In the summer of 1880, accompanied by three of his colleagues--Tupper, Pope, and Macpherson--Macdonald visited England for the purpose of inducing capitalists to take hold of the enterprise. After much negotiation they were successful, and on September 14, 1880, an agreement for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was signed in London. The company was to receive $25,000,000 and 25,000,000 acres of land in alternate blocks on each side of the railway running from Winnipeg to Jasper House at the Rockies. The line was to be completed by May 1, 1891, and the company was to deposit one million dollars as evidencing its ability to carry out the bargain. The contract was finally executed at Ottawa on October 21, 1880. Parliament was then summoned in order to ratify what the Government had done.