at once to see Gladstone about it; however it was shunted off, but I think a great step would be gained by trying to get them to help us about Immigration, and I was glad to see in Gisborne's letter a suggestion to apply to the Government to be generous in this in exchange for their shabby treatment of the troops question I mean to put down my own views about it in some way, if even only for transmission to yourselves privately next mail; that is, unless we see our way jointly (Featherston and I) to the same conclusion, that it is best to give up the regiment question and try immigration help. Gisborne's minute in reply to the dispatch of 7 October is admired as it deserves. Nothing could be better than the tone and temper of it; and it came just in time to prevent too great a crow by the Colonial office over the tone of your own Minute about the Conference, which they were of course very delighted at. I must tell you that when Granville sent us privately, some days after last mail had left, a copy of his dispatch to Bowen of 25 February, we wrote to say that since that decision was thus communicated we had no alternative but to send in a remonstrance, as any further appeal to Ld Granville on our previous terms would be fruitless. Featherston was very anxious for this memorandum to go in before the mail came in, as we had heard by your telegram that your own reply was on its way: but I could never please myself about composing it, and was besides, for my own part, most desirous to see your own line first. So that we put it off till the mail came in, and then I set to drafting it: but neither I nor F. like my work, and I must reconstruct it altogether. We both hoped it would at any rate have gone in before the mail left, in order that you might get it now: "but it is not so, and you will have to wait. It is a very difficult thing to fix what the line of such a memorandum from ourselves should