complaisant than the noble lord, although it has not the
countervailing scruples which must have weighed upon
a cabinet minister, the late organ and leader of the
government in these walls, now standing alone in his
abandonment of office? If we could not feel for the
public calamities, we must still be roused by our own
private anxiety and sorrow. I, myself, have two near
relations in this war; many of us have near relations
among the sufferers. It is our boast, as a portion of
the gentlemen of England, that, wherever danger is to
be braved or honour is to be won, there some of our
kindred blood is flowing or may flow; and after the
miseries so simply told by the member for Northamptonshire,
shall we be deprived of a remedy for the evils you
admit, of an inquiry into the abuses you deplore,
because of some paltry technical objections to the words of
the only motion that promises relief—because it is a vote
for inquiry, when it ought to be a vote of censure?
Take it, then, as a vote of censure, and let it so stand as
a precedent to other times, if other times should be as
grievously affected under a similar administration."
Sir E. B. Lytton proceeded to state that the expedition
to the Crimea had been undertaken in utter ignorance
of the country they were to invade, the forces they were
to encounter, and the supplies which they might expect;
and it was this ignorance, and not the petty collateral
causes which the Secretary–at–War had cited, to which
the disasters were to be attributed. "This ignorance
(he said) is the more inexcusable because you disdain
the available sources of information. This is the
fundamental cause of our disaster, and not the comparatively
petty and collateral causes to which the Secretary–at–
War would assign them. The ignorance, indeed on a
former occasion, the government confessed; and when
we were convened on the 12th of December we heard
that synod of veteran statesmen—those analecta majora
of the wisdom and genius of parliament—actually make
their ignorance the excuse for their incapacity. "We
might accept that excuse for the sake of its candour:
but the government have asked more, for, as I will
undertake to show, they have asked us to acquit them
of disasters when they took no pains to acquire the
information that was necessary for success. It has,
indeed, been said, that the public were no wiser than
the government—that the public underrated the power
of Russia, and demanded the premature siege of
Sebastopol. If this were true, what then? Why do we
choose ministers—why do we give them salaries, patronage,
honours—if it is not to have some men wiser than
the public, at least in all that relates to the offices they
hold? It may be a noble fault in a people to disregard
the strength of an enemy when a cause is just. Who
does not love and admire this English people more than
when they rose as one man to cry 'No matter what the
cost or hazard—let us defend the weak against the
strong?' But if to underrate the power of an enemy
was almost a merit in the people, it was a grave
dereliction of duty in a Minister–of–War. But I deny that
the public, fairly considered, were not wiser than the
government, and there is scarcely a point which you
have covered with a blunder on which some one or
other of the public did not try to prepare and warn
you." The people, he continued, looked to triumphs
on the sea rather than on the land; but when nearly
the whole Black Sea lay defenceless before them, the
fleet contented themselves with an ineffectual bombardment
of Odessa, for which—in consequence, he was
sure, of private instructions—the admiral afterwards
made an apology. It was said that the destruction of
Odessa would have been an act of inhumanity. Why,
Odessa was the feeder of Sebastopol, and to spare it was
the grossest inhumanity to our soldiers. The whole
campaign was mismanaged, [Sir E. B. Lytton read
several extracts from private letters to show that such
was the case.] Of the whole year, the government had
chosen the two unhealthiest months to encamp the army
at Varna; and they had chosen the winter as the time
to attack the Gibraltar of the East. He did not blame
the government because the army had been exposed to
wind, and rain, and mud, but he did blame them for
not taking those precautions against the Crimean winter
which any traveller could have told them were necessary.
He traced many evils to the fact of a coalition
government, in which everybody's principles agreed with
nobody's opinions. It was said that Lord Palmerston
was likely to be advanced in position as the result
of these disputes. He regarded that noble lord with
feelings of the greatest admiration; and he believed
his greatest danger would arise from the armed neutrality
of his unsuccessful advocate and friend, the noble
member for London. "That noble lord (said Sir B.
Lytton), on Friday last, attempted, not triumphantly,
to vindicate the whigs from the charge of being an
exclusive party that required all power for itself; and
he found a solitary instance for the refutation of that
charge in the magnanimity with which the whigs had
consented to that division of power which his desertion
now recants and condemns. But in plain words his
vindication only amounts to this, that where the whigs
could not get all the power they reluctantly consented
to accept half. Now, gentlemen opposite will, perhaps,
pardon me if I say, that I think the secret of whig
exclusiveness and whig ascendancy has been mainly
this,—you, the large body of independent liberal
politicians, the advocates for progress, have supposed,
from the memory of former contests now ended, that
while England is advancing, a large section of your
countrymen, with no visible interest in existing abuses,
is for standing still; and thus you have given, not to
yourselves, not to the creed and leaders of the vast
popular party, but to a small hereditary combination of
great families,—a fictitious monopoly of liberal policy—a
genuine monopoly of lethargic government. It is my
firm belief that any administration, formed from either
side of the house, should we be so unfortunate as to lose
the present, would be as fully alive to the necessity of
popular measures, of steady progress, of sympathy with
the free and enlightened people they might aspire to
govern, as any of those great men who are democrats in
opposition and oligarchs in office. But to me individually
and to the public it is a matter of comparative
indifference from what section of men a government at
this moment shall be formed, so long as it manfully
represents the great cause to which the honour and
safety of England are committed, and carries into
practical execution the spirit that animates the humblest
tradesman, the poorest artisan who has sent his scanty
earnings to the relief of our suffering army. It has
been said, as the crowning excuse for the government,
that all our preceding wars have begun with blunders.
Were this an arena for historical disquisition, I should
deny that fact; but grant it for the sake of argument.
How were those blunders repaired and converted into
triumphs? I know a case in point. Once in the last
century there was a Duke of Newcastle, who presided
over the conduct of a war, and was supported by a
powerful league of aristocratic combinations. That war
was, indeed, a series of blunders and disasters. In vain
attempts were made to patch up that luckless ministry
—in vain some drops of healthful blood were infused
into its feeble and decrepit constitution—the people at
last became aroused, indignant, irresistible. They
applied one remedy; that remedy is now before ourselves.
They dismissed their government and saved their
army." [This speech was received with much cheering.]
—Mr. GLADSTONE entered into explanations at variance
with Lord John Russell's statement. The noble lord
had not urged his remonstrances from November up to
his resignation. In November there were no complaints
against the conduct of the War–office; nay, in October
the noble lord wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, stating
his belief that he had done in his office all man could do.
More than this, the Earl of Aberdeen, being doubtful of
the intentions of the president of the council, asked
him, on the 16th of December, whether he still adhered
to his intention of pressing changes in the war
department; and the noble lord stated in reply that on the
advice of a friend he had abandoned the views he pressed
in November. Therefore, up to Tuesday night, when
the noble lord sent in his resignation, his colleagues did
not know that he was dissatisfied, or that he meant to
press his former views as to the re–organisation of the
war department; and it might be thought that after
losing the services and presence of the noble lord the
government ought not to have met the house, or at least
not to have met them without some reorganisation.