"Also because I might thus have had an opportunity of bearing my testimony to the very important part which the telegraph cable played in the negotiations for the treaty of Washington. If it had not been for the existence of the cable, those negotiations must have been protracted in a manner which might have been very injurious to their success." And at the same time Lord Iddesleigh, who as Sir Stafford Northcote had served as a member of the commission, wrote of the use of the Atlantic cable during the Washington negotiations: "There can be no doubt that it was a main agent in the matter. We usually met our American colleagues at midday, and we were by that time in possession of the views of our home government as adopted by their Cabinet in the afternoon of the same day." At a dinner given by Mr. Field in London on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1872, Mr. Gladstone said: "The union of the two countries means, after all, the union of the men by whom they are inhabited; and among the men by whom they are inhabited there are some whose happy lot it has been to contribute more than others to the accomplishment of what I will venture to call that sacred work. And who is there, gentlemen, of them all that has been more marked, either by energetic motion or by happy success in that great undertaking, than your chairman, who has gathered us round his hospitable board to-night? His business has been to unite these two countries by a telegraphic wire; but, gentlemen, he is almost a telegraphic wire himself. With the exception of the telegraphic wire, there is not, I believe, any one who has so frequently passed anything between the two countries. I am quite certain there is no man who, often as he has crossed the ocean, has more weightily been charged upon every voyage with sentiments of kindness and good-will, of which he has been the messenger between the one and the other people." It is appropriate here to introduce a note from Mr. Beecher of May 7, 1870: "_My dear Mr. Field_,--On Friday noon, as I sat writing in the _Christian Union_ office, about twelve of the clock, it suddenly flashed across me that I had engaged to breakfast with you at nine of the morning, alas! and have only to say in excuse that I forgot. "Ordinarily that would be an aggravation, for it would argue indifference; but in a man who forgets, he is grieved to say, funerals, weddings, and social engagements; who forgets what he reads, what he knows, it ought not to be considered as a specific sin so much as a generic infirmity. I pray you forgive me, and _invite_ me again! Then see if I forget. "I am very truly yours, "HENRY WARD BEECHER."