This Anglo-Portuguese Convention, made on the 26th of February, 1884, had it been carried out, would have killed at one blow the International Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of Central Africa, and all King Leopold’s cherished dreams would have evaporated like mists before the sun. [Sidenote: John Bull Complaisant.] But the good work done by King Leopold was not fated to be so ignominiously extinguished. France and Germany combined to denounce the Convention; and even with the British public it was very unpopular, as hard things being said of it in the British Parliament and press as any uttered in Belgium. King Leopold appealed to the British Government to suspend the ratification of the Convention, urging the despatch of a British mission to the West Coast to examine the validity of the treaties made between his Majesty’s representatives and native chiefs in that part of the Congo country which the Convention proposed to acknowledge as Portuguese territory. The British Government granted the King’s request, and despatched General Sir Frederic Goldsmid to the Congo. The result was a complete triumph for King Leopold, General Goldsmid reporting to his Government that the treaties were in perfect order and that the allegations of the Portuguese were baseless. That was the end of the Anglo-Portuguese Convention. Though the Anglo-Portuguese Convention was dead, and nothing remained to fear from it, the incident served to emphasise the great and growing necessity for endowing the Congo region with a clearer and more definite political status than it yet possessed. There were not wanting other, and happier, incidents pointing the same moral. On April 22, 1884, the United States officially recognised the flag of the International Association as that of a friendly Government, in which course it was soon after followed by France, though the latter country made it a condition of its acknowledgment that the Association would never alienate any of its territory without France having the right of pre-emption. Germany, entering upon joint action with France for the first time since the war of 1870, concurred in recognising the International Association as an independent and friendly State; and on the very day that she gave her adherence to it, she invited, through Prince Bismarck, all the Powers interested in the future of Africa to confer in Berlin with the object of regulating African affairs. The invitation was accepted by fourteen nations, whose representatives met under circumstances to be presently described, and gave reality to the grand idea, conceived long before by Henry Morton Stanley and Leopold II., King of the Belgians, of a Congo Free State. CHAPTER III FOUNDING OF THE CONGO FREE STATE [Sidenote: The Great Nations Agree.]