My meetings with the traders usually, but not invariably, resulted in friendly settlements.  The great firm of Guinness and Company were not so easily satisfied, and offered a stout resistance which correspondence and conference failed to overcome.  Under the Railway and Canal Traffic Act a mode of dealing with the impasse was provided by conciliation proceedings presided over by the Board of Trade.  This we took advantage of, and after several meetings in London a compromise was effected.  It was then that I met for the first time Mr. Francis Hopwood, who had just been appointed Secretary to the Railway Department of the Board of Trade.  I liked his way and thought that conciliation could not be in better hands than his.

The Board of Trade is more or less a mythical body, but very practical I found it on these and all other occasions.  Its proper designation is, I believe, “Committee of Privy Council for Trade.”  This Committee was first appointed in Cromwell’s time, and was revised under Charles II., as “Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations,” under which title it administered the Colonies.  When the United States became independent, Burke in a scathing speech, moved and carried the abolition of this paid Committee, which included Gibbon as its Secretary.  However, the Board of Trade could not be spared, and so it was restored by Order in Council in 1786.  Under that order the principal officers of State, and certain members of the Privy Council, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, have, ex officio, seats on the Committee, although no record exists of His Grace having ever left his arduous duties at Lambeth to attend the Committee.  Its jurisdiction extended as trade and commerce developed and railways appeared on the scene, and gradually it was divided into departments, and so the Board of Trade came into being.  Like Topsy it “grow’d.”  The Board of Trade is, in fact, a mere name, the president being practically the secretary for trade, the vice-president having, for 50 years past, been a Parliamentary secretary with duties similar to those of an under-secretary of State.  At present, besides the president (who has usually a seat in the Cabinet), the Parliamentary secretary and a permanent secretary, there are six assistant secretaries (in late war time many more), each in charge of a department.

In charge of the railway department in 1893 was, as I have said, Mr. Francis Hopwood.  He became Sir Francis in 1906, and from then onwards advanced from office to office and from honour to honour, until, during his secretaryship of the Irish Convention in 1917, his public services were rewarded with a peerage.  As railway secretary of the Board of Trade he was particularly distinguished for tact, strength and moderation.  Singularly courteous and obliging on all occasions, I, personally, have been much indebted to him for help and advice.

But all was not sunshine and happiness in this busy year of 1892.  A dark cloud of sorrow overshadowed it.  On a fateful day in January I lost, with tragic suddenness, the younger of my two sons, a bright amiable boy, of a sunny nature and gentle disposition.  He was accidentally killed on the railway.