Canada and the States

by Sir E. W. Watkin

"QUEBEC,
"15_th February_, 1868.

"MY DEAR MR. WATKIN,

"I am very grateful to you for your three kind letters of the 2nd, 13th, and 15th January last. Be good enough to excuse me if I have not sooner acknowledged their receipt.

"I am in Quebec since a couple of weeks, attending the 'Local Parliament,' of which I am a member. Things are going on very well. I got elected to the 'Local Parliament' in order to help my friends, the 'Local Ministers' to carry on the 'Local Government' and I must say they are doing it very well. The 'Quebec Legislature' carries this 'business' better than does the 'Ontario Legislature.' I will leave for Ottawa on the 17th instant, to be there on the 20th to attend the Council Meeting for deciding on the route of the Intercolonial Railway.

"I felt so sorry to hear that your dear son was so long unwell. I hope that by this time he is himself again.

"I gave to Mrs. Cartier and my daughters your kind message of good wishes for them and myself during this present year. We are all thankful to you. Have the goodness to accept in return from them and myself for you, Mrs. Watkin, and your dear son and daughter, our best wishes for the prosperity and happiness of you all.

"I must say, my dear Mr. Watkin, that with regard to the C. B. matter, you do really take too much trouble and interest for me. I am very thankful to you for it, and also to Mr. Baring and Lord Wharncliffe. If you have occasion to intimate to them my thankfulness, if any opportunity for so doing should offer itself to you, you would oblige me very much.

"Really it was too kind of Lord Wharncliffe to have brought that delicate matter before Lord Derby, and to have written you about it. I thank you for the enclosures you have made to me of what Lord Wharncliffe had written to you about the C. B.

"I have now to tell you something which happened about that subject since my last to you.

"You very likely must have seen or heard of the 'notification,' published in the 'London Gazette' at the end of the month of December last, about the honors distributed in Canada in connection with the 'Confederation.' In that 'notification' you must have seen that the names of 'myself and Galt' are omitted, and it was stated in that notification that it must be 'substituted' for the 'one' published on the 9th of July last, in which Galt's name and mine were inserted as C. B. Now, you must recollect that some months ago I wrote you about a 'confidential communication' of the Duke of Buckingham to Lord Monck, in order that it should be intimated to me and Gait, that there was no precedent of a resignation of the Order of the Bath, and that the only way left for the carrying out of Galt's wishes and mine would be by 'an order of Her Majesty ordering our names to be struck off the roll.' The communication of the Duke having been made to me in a confidential manner, I had no opportunity to answer it. I had written to Lord Monck to ask the Duke's leave for communicating to me in no confidential manner the despatch of the Duke, in order to give me an opportunity to answer it. I never had any answer from Lord Monck to that request. To my great surprise, at the end of December last, I received from Lord Monck a note, accompanied by the copy of a despatch from the Duke, informing me that a mode had been found to meet my wishes and those of Galt, which consisted in the publication in the 'London Gazette' of a 'notification' omitting our names, and such notification to be substituted for the former one of July last.