it is clear that your Majesty is forced to make peace, but at the same time you must dismiss your incompetent Ministers, who have not known how to serve either your father or yourself—dismiss us all.’ The consternation of the other members of the Council at this outburst was great, but peace was signed forthwith” (Lady Bloomfield’s “Court and Diplomatic Life”). Footnote 69: A letter to Lord Clarendon, May 22, 1853. Footnote 70: The strength of Lord Palmerston’s character and his determination in matters of ready action is well illustrated through an incident recorded by Baron Bunsen (“Memoirs of Bunsen”): “Bunsen and Palmerston had elected to be rowed over to Portsmouth from Osborne, when guests of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and, the weather being rough, the Foreign Minister took the helm, demonstrating the connection between steering the vessel of State, as Bunsen phrased it, and steering a boat at sea—‘Oh, _one learns boating at Cambridge, even though one may have learnt nothing better_,’ remarked Lord Palmerston; and guide the craft safely to shore he certainly did. But when they landed, alas! the train was gone.” Footnote 71: Gladstone’s speech, May 8, 1854. Footnote 72: “Napoleon’s object was clear: in the first place, to wrest from the Emperor Nicholas the moral hegemony which he wielded on the Continent, and then, after conquering Russia, to get his hands free to tear up the treaties of 1815, restore to France her so-called natural frontiers, and reconstruct the map of Europe in accordance with Napoleonic ideas” (Count Vitzthum’s “St. Petersburg and London,” vol. i. p. 73). Footnote 73: Earl Russell’s “Recollections and Suggestions, 1813–1873,” p. 476. Footnote 74: