When in Parliament, in 1857, I made a speech in the House of Commons, which some thought timely, upon the then pressing question of Indian railways. Mr. Disraeli did me the honor to listen to what I had to say. After his lamented death, one of his executors handed back to me, in an envelope, endorsed in his own hand, the letters which I had written to him in the years of the Manchester Athenaeum.
I may add, that Mr. Disraeli's ear was always open to me during the struggles for the Intercolonial Railway as a means, and the Confederation of the British Provinces in America as the great end, of our efforts. He was strongly in favour of Confederation; and, just as we owe the establishment of a Crown Colony in British Columbia to the sagacity of Bulwer Lytton, so we owe the final realization of Confederation, through the passing of an Act by the Queen, Lords, and Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Government, no less sagacious on this question, of Lord Beaconsfield.
I think the following letters reflect no discredit upon my motives,— neither self-seeking nor selfish. At the same time they are further evidence of Mr. Disraeli's thorough kindness and feeling of justice towards all who had, in his judgment, "deserved well of their country."
"LONDON, "3rd August, 1867.
"DEAR SIR,
"On my return from Scotland yesterday I learnt, confidentially, that you had been good enough to propose to present my name to the Queen for the honour of knighthood, in consideration of my services in connection with the union of the British North American Provinces under the Crown, and with their Intercolonial Railway. And I see that a semi-official statement to that effect is in some of the papers. Will you permit me to thank you very sincerely for such a recognition of the services of a political opponent whose known opinions will protect him from the suspicion of receiving, and you from that of giving, an unworthy reward.
"But the mail brings me tidings from Canada which convince me that the French Canadian population at large look upon the course pursued towards Messrs. Cartier and Langevin in the recent distribution of honors as an act of indifference towards themselves. It might be possible, therefore—but you will be the best judge—that the honor now proposed for me might lead to an aggravation of this feeling of dissatisfaction, which arises at the very inopportune moment of the birth of the 'new Dominion.'
"I think, therefore, that I should be as deficient in public duty as in generosity, if I did not evince my gratitude for your unsolicited remembrance by saying that, should the difficulty I allude to be found really to exist, I shall not feel myself slighted or aggrieved should your kindness proceed no further, pending such an unfortunate state of feeling.
"I ought to add, that my late most kind and indulgent friend, the Duke of Newcastle, suggested some little time before his death an even higher reward for the services, which he alone knew the real extent of; but at my request it was postponed until—all the manifold difficulties being one by one cleared away—the great question of policy which he had so much at heart should be finally realized in legislation.
"Having thus been led almost, to rely upon some adequate recognition of several years' gratuitous and arduous exertion on both sides of the Atlantic, I feel the sacrifice I propose to make. But a desire to avoid aggravating this unfortunate misunderstanding induces me to trouble you now.