"I must say, my dear Mr. Watkin, that with regard to the C. B. matter, you do really take too much trouble and interest for me. I am very thankful to you for it, and also to Mr. Baring and Lord Wharncliffe. If you have occasion to _intimate_ to them my thankfulness, if any opportunity for so doing should offer itself to you, you would oblige me very much. "Really it was too kind of Lord Wharncliffe to have brought that delicate matter before Lord Derby, and to have written you about it. I thank you for the enclosures you have made to me of what Lord Wharncliffe had written to you about the C. B. "I have now to tell you something which happened about that subject since my last to you. "You very likely must have seen or heard of the 'notification,' published in the 'London Gazette' at the end of the month of _December last_, about the _honors distributed_ in Canada in connection with the 'Confederation.' In that 'notification' you must have seen that the names of 'myself and Galt' are omitted, and it was stated in that _notification_ that it must be 'substituted' for the 'one' published on the 9th of July last, in which Galt's name and mine _were inserted_ as C. B. Now, you must recollect that some months ago I wrote you about a 'confidential communication' of the Duke of Buckingham to Lord Monck, in order that it should be intimated to me and Gait, that there was no precedent of a resignation of the Order of the Bath, and that the only way left for the _carrying out_ of Galt's wishes and mine would be by '_an order of Her Majesty ordering our names to be struck off the roll_.' The communication of the Duke having been made to me in a _confidential manner_, I had no opportunity to answer it. I had written to Lord Monck to ask the Duke's leave for communicating to me in no confidential manner the despatch of the Duke, in order to give me an opportunity to answer it. I never had any _answer_ from Lord _Monck_ to that request. To my great surprise, at the end of December last, I received from Lord Monck a note, accompanied by the copy of a despatch from the Duke, informing me that a _mode had been found_ to meet my wishes and those of Galt, which consisted in the publication in the 'London Gazette' of a 'notification' omitting our names, and such notification to be substituted for the former one of July last.