Pascal - the original Pascal, since in a comment you seem to dislike Turbo Pascal - was designed for a one-pass compiler. Things were laid out to make things very easy for that one-pass compiler - everything defined before its use, no back-tracking necessary. Also the grammar was very simple. And the compiler attempted very few (if any) optimizations compared to current compilers.

In short, the language design meant that the compiler didn't have to do much, so what it did, it could do quickly.