This was Talleyrand’s share in the second Revolution, and the fifth change of government in France during his career. He took his last oath of loyalty without hesitation. Speaking once to an Imperialist who distrusted him, he said: “I have never kept fealty to anyone when he has himself ceased to obey the dictates of common sense. If you will judge all my actions by this rule you will find that I have been eminently consistent.” Certainly, there is no serious need of justifying his conduct in 1830. He had plainly told Louis XVIII the conditions on which the Bourbons were reinstated. “Governments exist to-day solely for the people.” Louis and his friends had tried to reverse the principle. Charles X had thought government a branch of the Church. Talleyrand’s restoration to public affairs was a matter of course. Louis-Philippe offered him the Foreign Ministry, but he felt that the embassy at London would be at once less onerous and more important. Once more Talleyrand’s bias towards England proved its soundness. They agreed that London must be made the pivot of France’s foreign policy. Austria, Russia, and Prussia looked with little favour on the new outburst of French revolutionary ardour, or on the monarchy it had set up on deliberate utilitarian grounds. The best guarantee for the preservation of peace was to convince and draw close to England. Here, again, where the principles on which the throne of Louis-Philippe was raised should be familiar enough, there was (apart from the trouble that supervened in Belgium) a very natural tendency to view the outburst with alarm. Wellington had said in 1815, when the Duke of Orléans was proposed for the French throne, that he would be “merely a well-bred usurper.” What would he say now? The instability of Louis-Philippe’s first ministry and the propagandist expressions of the revolutionaries at Paris made the situation more difficult. It was decided that Talleyrand would be most useful at London. He received a very amiable reply from Lord Aberdeen (then Foreign Minister) to the announcement of his appointment, and left Paris on September 22nd, and reached “beautiful England, so rich, so peaceful,” a few days later. The cannonade at Dover that welcomed his arrival reminded him of the day when he had last quitted the country under an ignominious order of expulsion.