HENRY VIII.’S GATEWAY, WINDSOR CASTLE.
of its prestige in the eyes of foreign nations. The Czar rejoiced grimly at our embarrassments. The French Emperor began to doubt whether a stable alliance could be formed with a nation whose organic institutions were so unstable. The Queen accordingly put an end to Russell’s intrigues, which had wrought all this mischief, in a very summary manner. Lord Palmerston’s public-spirited behaviour in the crisis had obliterated all recollection of his faults in the past. Her Majesty therefore called on Palmerston to organise a Government. The Whigs who had served in the Coalition Cabinet agreed to serve under him. The Peelites would have done so, but they declined because of their deep personal regard for Aberdeen and Newcastle, who, they declared, had been most unjustly and spitefully attacked by the majority that had destroyed the Coalition Government.[202] Aberdeen and Newcastle, however, remonstrated with them, and the result was that Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and the Duke of Argyle consented to take office under Palmerston. When Lord Palmerston informed the Queen of this fact she felt that for a time her troubles were over, that again she was indebted to the disinterested devotion of Lord Aberdeen for a happy release from her difficulties. Palmerston himself also expressed his gratitude to Aberdeen in strong and cordial terms.[203]
REFRESHMENT ROOM, HOUSE OF LORDS.
The new Cabinet was really the old one. Only Russell, Aberdeen, and Newcastle were out of it, and Lord Panmure—a blustering person who was clever enough to make the world believe that to be noisy was to be energetic—was Secretary of State for War. This seemed rather to disconcert the factious place-hunters. “The Whigs at Brooks’s,” wrote Lady Palmerston to her son-in-law,[204] “were all up in arms at the Government not being formed on more Liberal principles, or rather with more of the Whig Party. They are disappointed at the Peelites joining, and at under people of that party keeping their places, so that, in a manner, there are hardly any places to fill up. They press, therefore, very much for a Whig in the Duchy of Lancaster, so as to make the Peelite division in a greater minority.” But the anger of the Tories could scarcely be kept within bounds. They argued that, as Aberdeen and Newcastle had not been evicted from office till after they had pretty nearly succeeded in setting the War Department in order, their successors would not only have a comparatively easy task, but would also win all the glory and prestige of finishing a victorious war. Lord Derby had missed a golden opportunity by refusing to form a Ministry; nay, he had done something that was still more damaging to them. In his explanation to the House of Lords he admitted that he could not govern without the aid of the Peelites. This implied that, having tried his colleagues in the work of administration, he had so little confidence in their capacity, that he did not dare to trust to them alone. “Disraeli,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “is in a state of disgust beyond all control. He told me he had spoken his mind to Lord Derby, and told him some very disagreeable truths.”[205] No sooner had the new Cabinet been formed than it was seen that another effort would be made to break it up. What was to be done with Mr. Roebuck’s Committee of Investigation? It was somewhat unconstitutional to vest it with the functions of the Executive, and Palmerston, on the 16th of February, appealed to the House not to appoint the Committee, or at least to suspend its judgment till the new Ministry had time to reform the War Department. Mr. Roebuck denied that the Ministry was really a new one, and insisted on the appointment of the Committee. The Peelites objected to the Committee as a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent. Palmerston agreed with them, but, like the majority of the Cabinet, he felt that to resist was to court another defeat in the House of Commons; and so he decided to yield. Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Mr. Gladstone accordingly tendered their resignations, and in a fortnight after it was formed the new Ministry was wrecked. On the 28th Sir George Cornewall Lewis took Mr. Gladstone’s place as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord John Russell re-entered the Cabinet as Colonial Secretary, and Sir C. Wood succeeded Sir J. Graham as First Lord of the Admiralty. “Things have gone mad here, the political world is quite crazy, and the Court is the only institution which does not lose its tranquil bearing”—thus wrote Prince Albert to the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg in the midst of the agitation caused by the second Ministerial crisis of 1855.
Meantime much had been done by Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, and Prince Albert, to improve the condition of the army at the seat of war. The railway from Balaclava to the camp was being pushed on rapidly; reinforcements were pouring in steadily. On the 13th of March Sir J. Burgoyne writes that “the men are beginning to look tolerably hearty and cheerful again.” A Sanitary Commission, organised by Lord Shaftesbury, had been despatched to aid the medical staff, and there was little for the new Ministers to do but to follow the path which Aberdeen and Newcastle had, by their toil and self-sacrifice during the recess, smoothed for them. The Queen, like the Peelites, was of opinion that the Roebuck Commission could do very little good, and, by diverting the attention of the officials from the work in hand, might do a great deal of harm. It was the expression of an angry desire to punish somebody, and, as Prince Albert said, it could not hope to find the right person, “because he does not exist.”[206] If any one was to blame, it was the Duke of Wellington, who had left the country with a loose aggregate of battalions which was in no true sense an organised army—without leaders trained and practised in the duties of general officers; without a reserve, a general staff, field commissariat, ambulance, or baggage corps; without training in the combined use of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, with their various systems of supply and transport; in fact, without any effective instrument whatever for waging war at a distance from England. In vain did the Committee endeavour to fix the blame for the disasters in the Crimea on somebody. Mr. Roebuck soon found that an examination of the Duke of Newcastle would rather tend to clear than to damage his reputation, and then the inevitable scapegoat was sought in the Queen’s husband. When Mr. Roebuck consulted the Duke privately on the subject, his Grace told him that the only really valuable advice he and Lord Aberdeen got was from Prince Albert. He added that the Queen’s health had suffered dreadfully from her anxiety about the troops, and that it was therefore absurd to imagine that the Prince had been conspiring to wreck the expedition. The Sebastopol Committee was a failure. It did not succeed in saddling any one with a definite responsibility for the sufferings of the army; nay, the Chairman (Mr. Roebuck), in speaking to a resolution censuring the Aberdeen Ministry for their management of the war, freed the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Sir J. Graham, the heads of the incriminated Departments, from blame.[207] The only severe censure was that passed on Lord Raglan for continuing Mr. Ward as purveyor for the hospital at Scutari after he had been pronounced unfit for his post.
