Note 207 — Chapter XXXI · PARTY GOVERNMENT AND WAR.

The opposition of the Peelites to the Committee on grounds of high policy and constitutional legality was soon justified. “Lord Stanley,” says Lord Malmesbury on the 3rd of March, “writes that Louis Napoleon objects strongly to the Committee of Inquiry into the War, and says if it takes place, though his army will still act on the same side as ours, it can no longer do so along with it. He is evidently alarmed at the laches of his own Ministers and generals being shown up to Europe and endangering his position.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 11. Little wonder that the investigation was “incomplete” and “inconclusive.”