'had to read up African papers, and found reason to fear that the King of the Belgians was contemplating the sale of his Congo dominions to France. We had a meeting at the Foreign Office in the afternoon, [Footnote: April 26th, 1884.] at which were present Lord Granville, Kimberley, Chamberlain, myself, and Fitzmaurice, and, finding that we could not possibly carry our Congo Treaty with Portugal, we determined to find a way out by referring it to the Powers.' [Footnote: The following extract from an article in the _Quarterly Review_ explains the importance attached by Sir Charles to this Congo treaty, and the far-reaching results which it would have had: 'In 1875 the results of Lieutenant Cameron's great journey across Africa became known.... They revealed ... the material for a Central African Empire awaiting the enterprise of a European or an Asiatic power. There is now little doubt that, had the famous treaty negotiated by Sir Charles Dilke, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, and Sir Robert Morier in 1884, been ratified and carried out ... the Congo Basin would have been added to the British Empire, together with Delagoa Bay and Nyasaland, before its time; with Dahomey also, and an all-British West African Coast between Sierra Leone and the Gaboon.' (_Quarterly Review_, January, 1906.) It would perhaps have been more accurate had the author spoken of the 'treaty proposed to be negotiated.' The original plan of Sir Robert Morier--part of a large scheme for the settlement of all outstanding questions with Portugal--contemplated _inter alia_ some territorial acquisition on the Congo by Great Britain. But the Cabinet put a veto on this. The Foreign Office had therefore to fall back on the alternative but less ambitious plan contained in the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1884, which was never ratified, owing to the opposition of Germany. (_Life of Granville_, vol. ii., chap. x.; and supra, I. 418. See also on this subject the observations of Sir Harry Johnston in his _History_, quoted above, pp. 277, 278, 343, 405.)] In October he goes on to relate how 'Lord Granville had been frightened by Plessen, the Prussian, coming to invite him to a Conference at Berlin, but explained that he had been much relieved on finding, as he put it, that it was only about the Congo. It was, however, the famous Africa Conference which virtually settled the whole future of the Dark Continent.' Sir Charles notes the result in January, 1885: