OTTAWA — Prime Minister Paul Martin may take solace in the fact that two of his most successful predecssors survived humiliating corruption scandals, but he also knows they lived in very different times.

Political scientists say the public's tolerance levels have changed dramatically since the days when patronage was a given, politicians had a lot of leeway and slipping a voter a fiver or a pint of whiskey outside the polling station was a routine event.

Sir John A. Macdonald, the country's first prime minister, weathered the CPR Scandal which blew up in 1873 and forced him out of office for five years. He was then triumphantly re-elected and "the Grand Old Man'' served until his death in 1891.

Mackenzie King, the longest-serving prime minister, was opposition leader in 1931-32, when what was called the Beauharnois Scandal erupted in Quebec and thrust the Liberal party into what King called "the valley of humiliation.''

Three years later, King led the party out of the valley to a majority government and won two more elections.

But that was then and times have changed, says Grace Skogstad, a political scientist at the University of Toronto.

"When you think of John A and even into the 30s, patronage, especially, I think in Quebec, was still pretty much accepted as a part of politics. People kind of understood that it was a part of it.

"Now you get the sense that people have much less tolerance for that and maybe one of the reasons why is that political scientists are constantly telling us now that the levels of trust people have in politicians have dived considerably.

Allan Tupper, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia says modern media have made scandals more pervasive.

Old-time newspapers, which often wore their political colours on their front pages offered a far different coverage that what comes out today in print, on TV and across the Web, he said.

"Scandal gets a lot more play in a lot more sources with a lot more intensity and frequency.''

Macdonald was caught when opposition politicians and newspapers uncovered evidence that a railway baron had channelled $350,000 to him and his Conservatives before the 1872 election.

They claimed Macdonald had approved the building of what would become the Canadian Pacific Railway in return for payoffs.

The single most most damning evidence was a telegram sent by Macdonald just before the vote, pleading for more money:

"I must have another $10,000. Will be the last time of calling. Do not fail me. Answer today.''

Macdonald said there was no connection between the donations and the railway and that the money went for election support: posters, flyers, carriages to take voters to the polls.

He denied any personal benefit. "These hands are clean.''

Macdonald was chastised by a parliamentary commission, his government fell the next month and the Conservatives were trounced in a new year's election.

But he came back.

King was Opposition leader in 1931-32, when it was learned that Beauharnois Light, Heat and Power Co., had bribed two Liberal senators to win permission for a river diversion when the Liberals were in power.

Commons and Senate committees discovered that Senators W. L. McDougald and Andrew Haydon received Beauharnois money and that the firm gave $700,000 to the federal and Quebec Liberals.

No link was ever made between the payments and the government policies, but McDougald resigned from the Senate and Haydon was fired as Liberal campaign treasurer.

King denied any knowledge of the affair and the Liberals suffered no lasting damage.

But the sponsorship scandal is a different beast. For one thing, the old scandals dealt with private companies using their own money to influence politicians. But some of the sponsorship allegations involve top federal Liberal officials allegedly providing lucrative contracts to firms in exchange for donations to the party.

"The world in which we see these things is profoundly different,'' says Tupper. "The rules under which they operate are profoundly different, the expectations of the people are different.''

He says it could be a potent election tool.

"The Conservatives obviously sense a political culture very sensitive to these matters in that one of the core messages of their last campaign was this matter.''