John Temple was Prime Minister of Great Britain in the 1850s. In 1853, Governor-General William Johnson sent his Minister of State Montgomery Harcourt to London to meet Temple to encourage British investment in the Confederation of North America. Temple was interested in the idea, and used his contacts among British bankers to persuade them to make a survey of investment opportunities in North America. As a result, British investment in the C.N.A. increased in every year from 1855 to 1880, except for a period of recession in the early 1860s.
Sobel's source for Temple's role in increased British investment in the C.N.A. is Simon Rabbino's The Invasion of the Pound: British Investments in the C.N.A. from 1840 to 1880 (London, 1965).