The final few months of 1862 saw a high water mark for Benjamin's diplomacy. In October, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, expressed confidence in Confederate victory, stating in Newcastle, "There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army. They are making, it appears, a navy, and they have made what is more than either—they have made a nation." Later that month, Napoleon proposed to the British and Russians (a U.S. ally) that they combine to require a six months' armistice for mediation, and an end to the blockade; if they did so, it would likely lead to Southern independence. The proposal divided the British Cabinet. In mid-November, at the urgings of Palmerston and War Secretary George Cornewall Lewis, members decided to continue to wait for the South to defeat Lincoln's forces before recognizing it. Although proponents of intervention were prepared to await another opportunity, growing realization among the British public that the Emancipation Proclamation meant that Union victory would be slavery's end made succoring the South politically infeasible.