ON THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS 

London, February 2. Yesterday evening the House of Commons 
again adjourned after Palmerston had made the official announcement of the resignation of the Ministry. 

In the House of Lords, Aberdeen gave the funeral oration of 
the “Cabinet of all the Talents’.* He said that he had opposed 
Roebuck’s motion not because his Administration wished to avoid 
an inquiry but because the motion was unconstitutional. Aberdeen 
avoided, however, giving any historical illustration of this in the 
manner of his friend Sidney Herbert, who asked the Commons if 
it was of a mind to imitate the French Directory (founded 1795), 
which sent out commissars to arrest Dumouriez—commissars who, 
as everybody knows, were extradited to Austria by Dumouriez in 
1793.4" Such learning is shunned by our Scottish thane. His 
Cabinet, he assures us, would only stand to gain by a committee of 
inquiry. He goes even further. He anticipates the outcome of the 
inquiry in a panegyric over himself and his colleagues, firstly the 
Secretary for War, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then the 
First Lord of the Admiralty and finally the Foreign Secretary. 
Each is claimed to have been a great man in his job—a talent. As 
far as England’s military situation is concerned, the position of the 
Crimean' army is, he admits, vexatious, but Bonaparte has told 
Europe that the French army comprises 581,000 men; in addition 
he is said to have ordered a new levy of 140,000. Sardinia had 
placed 15,000 splendid troops at the disposal of Lord Raglan. If 

“ Speeches by Aberdeen, Derby and Newcastle in the House of Lords on 
February 1, 1855 were published in The Times, No. 21967, February 2, 1855.— Ed. 

the peace negotiations in Vienna should break down then they 
were assured of the aid of a great military power with an army of 
500,000 men. 

At any rate our Scottish thane does not suffer from the same 
fault as the great economist and historian Sismondi, who, as he 
relates himself, saw everything in black with one eye. Aberdeen 
sees rosy colours with both eyes. Thus he now discovers thriving 
prosperity in all districts of England, while businessmen, manufacturers and workers allege that they are suffering from a major 
trade crisis. His antagonist Lord Derby is sprinkled by him with a 
measure of the Attic salt that Lord Byron long ago lauded in the 
Scottish thane.* 

My lords, the present need of the country is a strong Administration. How that is to 
be formed it was not for him to say. Rumour has asserted very confidently that Lord 
Derby has been commanded by Her Majesty to undertake the formation of an 

Administration. But seeing him in his place, he presumes that this was not the case and 
that public rumour errs. 

In order to grasp the Attic subtlety of this statement it is 
necessary to compare it with Lord Derby’s reply: 

“The noble earl Aberdeen has certainly underrated the source of his information, 
because not only may general rumour have informed him on the subject, but 
previously to entering into this House he (Derby) had, under his own hand, given the 
noble earl information as to the result of this command received from the Queen. 
Consequently, the general rumour which led the noble earl to believe it might be 
possible that he (Derby) had had some communication with Her Majesty are phrases 
which must have been employed by the noble ear! in his usual care to guard against 
exaggeration and to avoid overstating any part of his case.” 

In this situation Derby then declared that the state of the parties 
at the moment and the present position in the House of Commons 
did not permit him to undertake the formation of an Administration. 

For the audience in the House of Lords, and for the noble peers 
themselves, the elucidations of the War Secretary, the Duke of 
Newcastle, and the picture that he painted of the interior of the 
“harmonious family” not only supplanted all interest in the 
Crimean army but even in the ministerial crisis. Lord John 
Russell’s declaration in the Commons obliged him—said the Duke 
of Newcastle—to make a statement about his personal position in 
the defeated Cabinet. Russell’s version of the story had been 
neither complete nor faithful. In the matter of the separation of 
the War Office from the Colonial Office he had insinuated that he 

“ Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.— Ed. 

had only reluctantly given way to Newcastle’s “strong wish” when 
he consented to the bestowal of the War Office on the Duke. 
Rather, when this separation was decided by the Cabinet he 
(Newcastle) had stated that “as far as he _ personally was 
concerned he was quite prepared to assume either or neither of 
the two departments”. He could not, he said, remember Russell 
ever having expressed the desire to give the. War Office to 
Palmerston, but recollected that Russell himself once wished to 
take it over. He (Newcastle) had never thought of putting obstacles 
in his path. He had accepted the War Office, he said, in the full 
awareness that in the eventuality of success he would not receive 
the credit for it, and, in the eventuality of failure, all blame would 
be thrust on him. But he had deemed it his duty not to desert in 
the face of the danger and difficulties of this thankless post. This 
was, he went on, what some people had called his “arrogance”, 
and Lord John Russell in his nobly patronising fashion had 
termed his “commendable ambition’. Lord Russell, he claimed, 
had deliberately withheld from the House of Commons the 
following passage from a letter from Aberdeen to the noble Lord: 

“IT have shown your letter to the Duke of Newcastle. and Sidney Herbert. They 
both, as might have been expected, strongly urged me to adopt any such 
arrangement with respect to their offices as should be thought most conducive to 
the public service.” 

At this juncture he (Newcastle) had declared verbally to 
Aberdeen: 

“Do not give Lord Russell any pretext for quitting the Government. On no 
account resist his wishes to remove me from office. Do with me whatever is best for 
the public service.” 

Lord John Russell, he said, had referred mysteriously in the 
Commons to the errors which he had denounced in writing to 
Aberdeen. He had taken good care not to read out the relevant 
passages. The first concerned the failure to send the 97th 
Regiment from Athens to the Crimea, but the Foreign Secretary 
had declared the withdrawal of English troops from Athens to be 
impermissible and dangerous. As regards his second error, that he 
failed to send out 3,000 recruits, Lord Raglan had _ protested 
against the further supply of such young and_ undisciplined 
soldiers. Moreover, he said, at that time there had been no 
transport ships available. These two alleged errors were all that 
Russell had managed to concoct, relaxing with his colleagues in 
bathing resorts while he (Newcastle) had remained at his post 
toiling away throughout the year 1854. Incidentally, Russell 

himself had finally written to him on October 8 regarding the 
“errors”: 
“You have done all that could be done and J am sanguine of success.” 

Moreover, he went on, Aberdeen had put Russell's proposal 
concerning changes in personnel before the whole Cabinet. It had 
been unanimously rejected. On December 13 he (Newcastle) had 
defended his management of affairs in a detailed speech in the 
House of Lords; on December 16 Russell told Aberdeen that he 
had changed his mind and had given up his wishes regarding the 
change in posts. Russell, he continued, had never taken any 
measures or made any proposals as to the reform of the War 
Administration, with two exceptions. Three days before his 
resignation and, Roebuck’s motion there had been a Cabinet 
meeting. Russell suggested giving the meetings of the heads of all 
the military departments, which had been taking place at the 
offices of the Secretary for War, a formal and official character. 
Russell’s proposal was accepted. Shortly afterwards, Russell had 
sent in a written proposal, which, apart from the innovation 
already approved by the Cabinet, contained only two suggestions: 
1. the creation of a supreme board headed by the Secretary of 
State for War to absorb the Board of Ordnance and control the 
entire civil administration of the army; 2. the appointment of two 
senior officers, apart from the heads of the war departments 
hitherto involved, to this supreme board. Russell declared in the 
Commons that he had had good reason to believe that his “written 
proposals” would be rejected. This was untrue. Suggestion No. 1 
was accepted by Newcastle; suggestion No. 2 was rejected, among 
other reasons because the “Commissary General” whom Russell 
wished to call in had for many years been a mythical person and 
no longer existed in the British army. Thus, he said, Russell had 
never made a proposal that had not been accepted. Moreover, he 
(Newcastle) had already informed Lord Aberdeen on January 23 
that however Parliament might decide, whether for or against the 
Ministry, he would resign from the Ministry. He simply did not 
want to give the appearance of running away before Parliament 
had passed judgment. 

Lord John Russell, whose whole life, as old Cobbett says, was 
just a series of “false pretexts for living”, has, as Newcastle’s 
speech shows, now died on false pretexts too.