concerned, has been negotiated under influences dictated by motives, and in a spirit which we are without the means of estimating), or to take the responsibility of breaking up this arrangement, of losing the alliance which is offered to us, and which is so much wanted,[261] and even of estranging the friendly feeling of the ally who advocates the arrangement itself.”[262] One member of the Cabinet, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, doubtless expressed the feeling of all his colleagues when he told Mr. Greville that they felt they had no alternative but to submit with a good grace. To this, says Mr. Greville, he “added an expression of his disgust at the pitiful figure we cut in the affair, being obliged to obey the commands of Louis Napoleon, and after our insolence, swagger, and bravado, to submit to terms of peace which we had just rejected; all which humiliation, he justly said, was the consequence of our plunging into war without any reason, and in defiance of all prudence and sound policy.” He might have added that it was the inevitable result of plunging into war with a treacherous ally, on whose fidelity Palmerston was senseless enough to stake the fortunes of the Empire, and the sceptre of his Sovereign. The Queen personally considered the terms which were thus thrust on England far from adequate; still she set her face against Palmerston’s first proposal to continue the war for the sake of winning prospective victories. After some trivial modifications the [Illustration: THE THRONE ROOM, ST. JAMES’S PALACE. (_From a Photograph by H. N. King._)]