"Can a man, who, on a distant and exposed frontier, surrounded by difficulties, with invasions of Her Majesty's territories threatening on several points, assume a responsibility which he, guided by many circumstances which he can neither record nor remember as they come hurrying on one after another, be fairly judged of in respect of the amount of responsibility he assumes by those who, in the quiet of distant offices in London, know nothing of the anxieties or nature of the difficulties he had to encounter? If Her Majesty's possessions and Her Majesty's subjects are saved from threatening dangers, and they gratefully acknowledge this, whilst the Empire receives no hurt, is it a fitting return that the only reward he should receive should be the highest punishment which it is in the power of Her Majesty's Ministers to inflict? This may be the reward they bestow; but the true one of the consciousness of difficult duties performed to the best of his ability, with great personal sacrifice, they cannot take from him." [Sidenote: Grey Reinstalled by Palmerston] But Sir George Grey had friends of greater power than the novelist politician at the Colonial Office or his narrow-visioned assistant. From the time, in 1857, when he had diverted troops to India, which had stopped at Cape Town on their way to China, and by this seemingly reckless assumption of responsibility had enabled Sir Colin Campbell to relieve Lucknow and to save the situation in those terrible days of mutiny, he was given the lasting friendship and appreciation of the Queen. His further policy of conciliating the natives by personal visits and explanations of the situation; his wise trust in the friendship of savage chiefs whom he knew often understood honor and practiced it better than the white man himself; and his stripping the country of troops and munitions of war in order to give additional help in the Indian crisis; naturally added to the esteem which his first and most daring act had inspired in the mind of a Sovereign who was, even in those days, an Imperial statesman in the highest sense of the word. Of his action in changing the route of the troops from Hong Kong to Calcutta, and sending Cape troops and artillery and stores and specie to India in time to be of the most valuable service, the Queen commanded Mr. Labouchere, Colonial Secretary, to express privately to Sir George Grey "her high appreciation" as well as in a more formal manner. Later on she hesitated for some time in giving her assent to his recall, and short of precipitating a Cabinet crisis did refuse. A little later the Derby Government was defeated, and as soon as Lord Palmerston came into power Grey was promptly reinstalled, and, on his arrival in London, was informed by the Prince Consort of the Queen's "approval of the measures taken by him and the policy of confederation which he had pursued," and her opinion that the plans proposed were