Mr. Chamberlain had claimed that the late Lord Salisbury had approved of his policy of preferential tariffs, while the present Lord Salisbury held that his father "had profoundly dissented from Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal policy." As Lord Salisbury and his brothers had published their father's private opinions, which may have referred more to the time and method and details of Mr. Chamberlain's action than to the general principle of preferential tariffs, I had no reason to think that there could be any objection to publishing the late Premier's own written words on the subject. The letters from which I quoted, although not intended for publication at the time, contained his views on a great public question, and did not relate to any person, or any private matter, and as he was not here to speak for himself, I felt that it was desirable to publish the extracts in order to show clearly what his views were. Lord Robert Cecil says that it would have been more courteous in me to have consulted with his father's representatives before publishing, but in view of their own action in publishing his oral, private opinions, it would seem discourteous to assume that they could, under the circumstances, desire to suppress positive evidence on a matter of grave public importance to our Empire. Yours, etc., GEORGE T. DENISON. TORONTO, CANADA, _31st May, 1905_. This closed the episode. CHAPTER XXVIII CONGRESS OF CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF THE EMPIRE In 1906 I went to England again, and once more the Toronto Board of Trade appointed me as one of their delegates to the Sixth Congress of Chambers of Commerce of the Empire to be held in London. I arrived in London on the 27th June, and the next evening, at the Royal Colonial Institute Conversazione, I met Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, and it was arranged that my wife and I were to lunch with them a few days later. Mr. Chamberlain had wished that we should be alone. After lunch the ladies went upstairs, and Mr. Chamberlain had a quiet talk with me for about an hour. He gave me the whole history of the difficulties he had encountered and explained how it was that he was not able to carry out the arrangement we had discussed in 1902, just before the conference. He told me that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach objected to throwing off the one shilling a quarter on wheat in favour of the colonies, because he had put it on only a short time before as a necessary war tax to raise funds for the South African War, that the expenses were still going on, and that it would be inconsistent in him to agree to it at the time.