Now I wish to tell you how matters stand out here. Our people are very much discouraged. Many of our strongest Imperialists in the past are beginning to advocate the repeal of our preference to Great Britain. The manufacturers who were in favour of the preference, provided we had a prospect of getting a reciprocal advantage in your markets, are, many of them for their personal ends, now desirous of stopping it. All the disaffected (there are not very many of them) are using the failure of the Conference to attack and ridicule the Imperial cause. This is all very serious. The gravest danger of all, however, is that the United States will never give our Empire another chance to consolidate itself if they can prevent it. They are already agitating for the reassembling of the High Joint Commission to consider, among other things, reciprocal tariffs. Only the other day a member of the Massachusetts House of Assembly declared in that house that he had assurances from Washington that the passage of a resolution in favour of reciprocity with Canada would be welcomed by the administration. We see the danger of this, and our Government have made excuses to delay the meeting of the Commission until October. Now if nothing is done in the meantime towards combining the Empire--if nothing is done to make such a start towards it as would give our people encouragement, what will happen? The United States will give us the offer of free reciprocity in natural products. What would our people be likely to do in that case? All along the frontier our farmers would find it very convenient to sell their barley, oats, hay, butter, poultry, eggs, &c., to the cities on the border. In the North West it would appeal to our western farmers, who would be glad to get their wheat in free to the mills of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Such a proposition might therefore carry in our Parliament, and would probably bind us for ten or fifteen years. This would be a dead block against any combination of the Empire for preferential trade, for then you could not give us a preference, as we would be debarred from putting a duty on United States articles coming across our border, which would be necessary if an Imperial scheme were carried out.