M. Thiers was not wholly responsible for the position in which France found herself at the time of his downfall. When he took office, the mistakes of his predecessor had already carried the country a great distance upon the road to isolation. Nevertheless, the brief period of his second administration affords an instructive example of the many mistakes which a very able man may commit. The two principal objects which he set himself to achieve were utterly incompatible. He sincerely desired to retain the friendship of Great Britain and, at the same time, he proposed to establish Mehemet Ali as the ruler of an independent State, which was to owe its separate existence to French patronage. But, inasmuch as Lord Palmerston was resolved to drive the Pasha out of Syria and greatly to restrict his power, he was obliged to seek to attain his ends by tortuous methods. Thus, whilst he strove to prolong and to embarrass the negotiations in London, he endeavoured secretly, and in flagrant violation of the _collective note of July 27, 1839_, to cajole the Porte into conceding the demands of the Pasha. He was able to persuade himself that the young Sultan and his ministers, rather than follow the congenial advice of the Powers which desired to curb the ambition of Mehemet Ali, would listen to the unpalatable counsels of France, the friend of their arch-enemy the Viceroy of Egypt. A policy founded upon so erroneous a conception of human nature was fore-doomed to failure. The intrigues of the French agents at Alexandria and Constantinople[657] were exposed, the correspondence of M. Coste found its way into Lord Palmerston's drawer at the Foreign Office, and the treaty between the four Powers and the Porte was concluded on July 15.