Attempts in 1857 to approach Mr Labouchere through the lieutenant-governor, Sir Gaspard Le Marchant, and through his brother, Sir Denis, a well-known literary man, failed, but in 1858 Lord Derby, whom Howe had known earlier as Lord Stanley, became prime minister, and Howe renewed his claim. With statesmanlike intuition he saw the possibilities of the Pacific slope, now, by the {126} Oregon Treaty, shared between Great Britain and the United States, and asked for the governorship of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, which he thought should be united under the name of British Oregon. Here he could guide the infant steps of a vaster Nova Scotia; here were mountain and valley and sea, farm and forest and fisheries; here were international problems, not only of relations with the United States, but with the awakening East. Lord Derby's answer was delayed, through no fault of his own, and when in November Howe brought out an edition of his collected speeches and public letters, he took advantage of the opportunity to send presentation copies, with long letters, to Lord John Russell, Lord Derby, Sir E. B. Lytton, Mr Merivale, the permanent under-secretary of the Colonial Office, and to several other men of influence. To the colonial secretary he complained bitterly that 'our system denies to a colonist, so trained, the distinctions which others of less experience, with no knowledge of the provinces they are sent to govern, and intellectually not my superiors, readily obtain.' Lord Derby was an English gentleman, and he replied in what Howe himself called 'a very handsome letter,' {127} saying that as he could not interfere with the patronage of the Colonial Office, he had therefore left the matter to Sir E. B. Lytton. 'I regret to find by your letter that you think that you have cause to complain of the conduct of the Colonial Office, in reference to position in the public service. . . . I am unable to express any opinion upon the subject, except a very confident one that Sir E. Lytton cannot have any disposition to underrate public services, the value of which must be known to all who within the last twenty years have been connected with the North American Colonies.' Howe's hopes were high. 'I suppose they will now do something with or for me,' he wrote to a friend. But the governorship of British Columbia was not for him. Nor indeed could it be, richly though he had deserved that or any other governorship. The chief interest in the new province was that of the Hudson's Bay Company; for twenty years this company's interests and those of Great Britain had been protected on the Pacific by Sir James Douglas, to whom the governorship rightly fell. In 1859 Howe made a last appeal to the Duke of Newcastle, with a like result. {128}