On the 4th November, 1873, Sir John Macdonald placed his resignation in the hands of the governor-general, the Earl of Dufferin; and the first ministry of the Dominion came to an end after six years of office.  The circumstances of this resignation were regrettable in the extreme.  In 1872 two companies received charters for the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway—­one of them under the direction of probably the wealthiest man in Canada, Sir Hugh Allan of Montreal, and the other under the presidency of the Honourable David Macpherson, a capitalist of Toronto.  The government was unwilling for political reasons to give the preference to either of these companies, and tried to bring about an amalgamation.  While negotiations were proceeding with this object in view, the general elections of 1872 came on, and Sir Hugh Allan made large contributions to the funds of the Conservative party.  The facts were disclosed in 1873 before a royal commission appointed by the governor-general to inquire into charges made in the Canadian house of commons by a prominent Liberal, Mr. Huntington.  An investigation ordered by the house when the charges were first brought forward, had failed chiefly on account of the legal inability of the committee to take evidence under oath; and the government then advised the appointment of the commission in question.  Parliament was called together in October, 1873, to receive the report of the commissioners, and after a long and vehement debate Sir John Macdonald, not daring to test the opinion of the house by a vote, immediately resigned.  In justice to Sir John Macdonald it must be stated that Sir Hugh Allan knew, before he subscribed a single farthing, that the privilege of building the railway could be conceded only to an amalgamated company.  When it was shown some months after the elections that the proposed amalgamation could not be effected, the government issued a royal charter to a new company in which all the provinces were fairly represented, and in which Sir Hugh Allan appears at first to have had no special influence, although the directors of their own motion, subsequently selected him as president on account of his wealth and business standing in Canada.  Despite Sir John Macdonald’s plausible explanations to the governor-general, and his vigorous and even pathetic appeal to the house before he resigned, the whole transaction was unequivocally condemned by sound public opinion.  His own confidential secretary, whom he had chosen before his death as his biographer, admits that even a large body of his faithful supporters “were impelled to the conclusion that a government which had benefited politically by large sums of money contributed by a person with whom it was negotiating on the part of the Dominion, could no longer command their confidence or support, and that for them the time had come to choose between their conscience and their party.”