I then said that nothing could be done until the German-Belgian Treaties of 1862 were denounced. He asked me why, and I told him the effect of the treaties was to bar any such arrangement. He did not know of the particular clauses and could hardly believe they existed. When told he would find I was right, he said, "That is most unfortunate, and they will have to be denounced." I thanked him for taking that view and felt that I had a strong ally on both points. From subsequent conversations and from many letters received from him during the following ten or twelve years, I always relied upon him as a true friend who would help us at the first possible opportunity. On this occasion I also spoke to him seriously as to my forebodings as to the failure of the negotiations at Washington and told him I believed he was under the impression that the matter was about settled, but warned him that at the last moment either the Senate or the President, or someone, would upset everything. I had spoken very plainly at the Canada Club not long before on the Behring's Sea business, and some of my remarks were published in several papers. On this point I said: We in Canada are for the British Connection. In years gone by when we thought that the British flag was insulted, though it was not a matter in which we were concerned and happened hundreds of miles from our shores, our blood was up, and we were ready to defend the old emblem. Can you wonder, then, that we in Canada have failed to understand how your powerful British ironclads could be idle in the harbours of our Pacific coasts while British subjects were being outraged in Behring's Sea and the old British flag insulted? No, that to us has been beyond comprehension.