So far as the Queen was concerned, Palmerston’s arguments had no effect on her mind. She had warned him that the change in the Danish succession, effected by the Treaty of London, was illegal, and would one day be disputed. It might have been legalised by a _fait accompli_--that is to say, if the Germans in the Duchies had been induced to accept the change by a conciliatory policy. On the contrary, the policy of the Danes had been so offensively anti-German, that the Sleswig-Holsteiners were more opposed to the Treaty than ever. Moreover, Germans all over the Fatherland were with them, and it was therefore idle to ask German Sovereigns to risk revolution by forcing on Germans in the Duchies an oppressive foreign government. To propose English intervention was equally objectionable to the Queen. She was firmly convinced that the English people wanted peace and not war, and that the integrity of a petty Northern State was not, in their opinion, essential to their Imperial existence. Her Majesty laid her finger at the outset on the point of folly in Palmerston’s policy, which was the maintenance of the Treaty of 1852. Would Englishmen consent to levy war on the German race to uphold an instrument which the carelessness of English diplomatists, in refusing to obtain legal ratifications, had rendered invalid? And then what would men of business say when asked to bear the burden of such a war, to uphold a Treaty that thrust dynasty on a people who did not want it? Curiously enough, the same line of argument was subsequently taken by Mr. Cobden, though he did not know the secret history of the Treaty of London. “In 1852,” said he, “by the mischievous activity of our Foreign Office, seven diplomatists were brought round a green table in London to settle the destinies of a million of people in the two provinces of Sleswig and Holstein without the slightest reference to the wants and wishes, and the tendencies or interests, of that people. The preamble of the Treaty which was then and there agreed to, stated that what those seven diplomatists were going to do was to maintain the integrity of the Danish monarchy, and to sustain the balance of power in Europe. Kings, emperors, princes, were represented at that meeting, but the people had not the slightest voice or right in the matter. They settled the Treaty, the object of which was to draw closer the bonds between those two provinces and Denmark. The tendency of the great majority of the people of these provinces--about a million of them altogether--was altogether in the direction of Germany. From that time to this year the Treaty was followed by constant agitation and discord; two wars have sprung out of it, and it has ended in the Treaty being torn to pieces by two of the Governments who were prominent parties to the Treaty.”[183] Still, the Queen was so desirous of peace that she did not refuse her sanction to proposals of compromise which