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T the opening of the year 1855 the nation had been at war for nine months, and the conduct and progress of the campaign engrossed the attention of all classes, to the exclusion of every other topic doubts as to the capacity of the commanders abroad, and of the ministry at home, had gradually grown stronger. Rumours of neglect, disorder, and incompetency had long been prevalent; day by day the appalling truth became more apparent, and towards the end of January the public sympathy and indignation were roused to the utmost by the conviction that the soldiers of the finest army Great Britain had ever sent forth were ingloriously perishing of disease, overtasked and underfed, from the absence of the most ordinary calculation and foresight. The nation was greatly excited, and in the midst of that excitement, on Tuesday, January 23, Parliament reassembled.

On the very first evening there were several notices of motion in both Houses, tending to bring the conduct of the war under critical review. The most important were those by the Earl of Ellenborough in the House of Lords, and Mr. Roebuck in the House of Commons. The former would have involved a discussion upon the state of the army in the Crimea; the latter demanded a formal inquiry into the whole administration of the war. The attention of the public was centred in these two motions, and more particularly upon that of Mr. Roebuck. A few days subsequently

the stability of the Government was also threatened by Lord Lyndhurst, who, on the 28th January, gave notice that he should, on the 2nd February, move the following resolution :-" 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."

The motions of the Earl of Ellenborough and Mr. Roebuck were to have been discussed on the 25th of January; but on that day Parliament and the public were astonished by the formal announcement of the resignation of Lord John Russell. His conduct in adopting this step at such a crisis was subject to much comment by men of all parties, and to severe criticism on the part of the press. It was remarked that he had for some time been actuated by a restless ambition which made him uneasy in the seat which his patriotism, or his love of office, had induced him to accept on the formation of the Coalition Ministry; that in declining to appear in the House of Commons as the representative of a Government in which he had occupied so prominent a position, and thus apparently attempting to avoid the responsibility which was attached to every member of the Administra

tion, his conduct presented a wide and painful deviation from the rules of political morality, which had hitherto been faithfully observed in this country. It was said that he must have anticipated such a discussion as that which Mr. Roebuck's motion involved, and that, if he was unprepared to meet it, he might have resigned at a moment less inconvenient to his colleagues, and less injurious to the country; that it would have been more honourable to fall with the other members of the Cabinet, than to consult his own convenience or interest by leaving them in the lurch on the very day before a great parliamentary discussion on their past conduct and policy, in the responsibility for which he was so deeply involved. On the 26th of January, the orders of the day having been postponed on the motion of Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell proceeded to state to an unusually crowded House of Commons the reasons which had led to his resignation a statement which he said he had postponed until that day at the request of Lord Aberdeen. Referring to the notice given by Mr. Roebuck, he observed that the power of inquiry was a most valuable privilege of the House, and that such a motion could only be resisted on one of two grounds, either that existing evils did not call for an inquiry, or that means had been taken to remedy those evils; with respect to the first, he said:"No one can deny the melancholy condition of our army before Sebastopol. (Cries of Hear, hear, hear!) The accounts which arrive from that quarter are not only painful, but they are horrible and heartrending; and I am sure no one would op

pose for a moment any measure which he thought likely, if not entirely to cure, even only to mitigate those evils. And, Sir, I must say that there is something that, with all the official knowledge to which I had access, is to me inexplicable in the state of that army. (Cries of Hear, hear!') If you had been told, as a reason against the expedition to the Crimea last year, that your troops would be seven miles frora the sea-seven miles from a secure port, which at that time, in contemplation of the expedition, we hardly hoped to possess, and that at seven miles' distance they should be in want of food, of clothes, and of shelter, to such a degree that they should perish at the rate of from 90 to 100 a day, I should have considered such a prediction as utterly preposterous, such an objection as fanciful and unjust. But now we are forced to confess the notoriety of that state of circumstances.' With respect to the other ground, he found, upon reflection, that it was impossible for him to urge that objection with effect. Reminding the House of the changes made last Session in the war departments, he stated that during the recess it had struck him that a better administration of those departments was required, and he proceeded to read a correspondence between Lord Aberdeen and himself upon this subject, in the course of which he suggested, as early as the 17th of November, that before Parliament met the seals of the War Department should be placed in the hands of Lord Palmerston, assigning his reasons confidentially to Lord Aberdeen, without throwing any blame upon Lord the Duke of Newcastle. Aberdeen did not concur in this