The ministry of Lord Liverpool, though ultra-Tory, was nevertheless embarrassed by the course of affairs. On June twentieth the premier wrote to Castlereagh that he wished Napoleon had been captured by Louis XVIII, and executed as a rebel. This amazing suggestion was the result of the progress made within a year by the doctrine of legitimacy. Although Talleyrand had observed the Hundred Days from the safe seclusion of Carlsbad, and was coldly received by his "legitimate" sovereign when he returned to Paris under Wellington's aegis, yet there was no one equally able to restore a "legitimate" government, and, with the aid of Wellington, who assumed without question the chief place in reconstructing France, he was soon in full activity. In strict logic, the allies reasoned that Napoleon was their common prisoner, and, as the chief malefactor, he should meet the fate which was to be Ney's, and later that of Murat. By long familiarity with such notions, the Czar had finally been converted to the once abhorrent idea of legitimacy, and was hatching the scheme of the Holy Alliance; even he would have made no objection. But English opinion, however irritated, would not tolerate the idea of death as a penalty for political offenses. Whatever ministers felt or said, they dared consider no alternative in dealing with Napoleon except that of imprisonment. Accordingly, St. Helena, the spot suggested at Vienna as being the most remote in the habitable world, was designated and the island was borrowed from the East India Company. Acts of Parliament were passed which established a special government for it, and cut it off from all outside communication, "for the better detaining in custody Napoleon Bonaparte." The Continental allies, therefore, on August second, declared the sometime Emperor to be their common prisoner. To England they yielded the right to determine his place of detention, but to each of themselves--Austria, Russia, and Prussia--was reserved the right of sending thither a commissioner who should determine the fact of actual imprisonment.