London, January 26. When an envoy of Sultan Malik-Shah came 
to Alamut and called on Hasan-i Sabbah to surrender, the ‘old 
man of the mountains”, instead of answering, beckoned to one of 
his fidawis,**> commanding him to kill himself. At once the youth 
plunged his dagger into his breast and fell to the floor, a lifeless 
corpse. In the same way the “old man” of the Coalition* had 
ordered his Lord John Russell to commit suicide on his behalf in 
the House of Commons. Russell, the old parliamentary philan- 
thropist, who always interpreted the commandment “Love thy 
neighbour as thyself” to mean that every man is his own 
neighbour, has preferred to kill the “old man” instead. We were 
not mistaken about Roebuck. His motion was arranged with 
Russell in order to salvage the “better part”—the Whigs—from 
the shipwreck. 

Indeed! This motion is not directed against the Ministry but 
against the “departments” that are directly responsible for the 
conduct of the war, ie., against the Peelites. Furthermore, it was 
obvious that at the opening of Parliament he had good reasons for 
making the declaration that the basis for negotiations was no basis 
insofar as Russia reserved the right to dispute each of the Four 
Points—and, that the negotiations were likewise no negotiations 
insofar as the English Cabinet had still not appointed a negotiator. 
Scarcely had Roebuck proposed his motion—on Tuesday—when 
Russell writes the same evening to the “old man” that this motion 
amounts to a vote of censure against the War Office (the Peelites), 


* Aberdeen.— Ed. 


604 , Karl Marx 


and that he must therefore tender his resignation.* Aberdeen goes 
to the Queen at Windsor Castle and advises her to accept his 
[Russell's] resignation, which is what happens. The courage of the 
“old man” is understandable when one learns that Palmerston 
has not handed in his resignation. | 

At the Thursday sitting the House of Commons is informed of 
these important events. It adjourns its sitting (and Roebuck his 
motion) until this evening.° Now the whole of the House of 
Commons rushes into the House of Lords where clarification 1s 
expected of Aberdeen, but Aberdeen is clever enough to be 
absent—reportedly back in Windsor—and the Duke of Newcastle 
recounts the same tale in the Lords as Palmerston has told in the 
Commons. In the meanwhile the Whigs of the Commons are 
appalled to discover in the House of Lords that their plan has 
been seen through and their retreat cut off. The Tories, not at all 
eager to re-install the Whigs, at the expense of the Peelites, in 
their old privilege as “divinely-appointed tenants of the British 
Empire”, have prevailed on Lord Lyndhurst to propose a motion 
which, in contrast to Roebuck’s motion, does not merely censure — 
a la Roebuck—individual departments of the Government but 
puts the entire Government formally in the dock. Lord Lynd- 
hurst’s motion reads as follows: 

“IT shall move on Friday, February 2, that in the opinion of this House the 
expedition to the Crimea was undertaken by Her Majesty’s Government with very 
inadequate means and without due caution or sufficient inquiry into the nature 
and extent of the resistance to be expected from the enemy: and that the neglect 


and mismanagement of the Government in the conduct of the enterprise have led 
to the most disastrous results.” 


There is no mistaking it: Lyndhurst’s motion is aimed at the 
Whigs just as Roebuck’s is aimed at the Aberdeenites. An 
incidental observation: Lord John Russell has informed the 
Commons through Hayter that he will explain the reasons for his 
resignation at the earliest opportunity, that is tonight. “He who 
expects nothing will not be disappointed.” **