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was ill-founded, supplies and reinforcements had been sent out as fast as possible to the army. The Bills were speedily passed, the vote of thanks given, and the House adjourned till the 23d of January. During this brief respite the public mind, unsatisfied by the explanations of the Ministry, excited by further articles in the papers, became more and more inflamed, and Parliament had scarcely renewed its sittings when Mr. Roebuck made himself the mouthpiece of the popular indignation, and gave notice of his intention to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the condition of our army before Sebastopol, and into the conduct of those departments of Government whose duty it was to minister to the wants of that army. The assault was felt by the Ministers themselves to be fatal. Lord John Russell, who had already been urging that Lord Palmerston should be placed at the head of the War Department, declared that resist- Fall of the ance was impossible, and withdrew. Thus severely Ministry. shaken by the defection of their leader in the Lower Feb. 1855. House, the Government, after a debate of two nights, was defeated by a majority of 157. Of course they at once resigned.

Aberdeen

on their trial.

But the motion which had caused their defeat implied much more than a change of Ministry. The people of England who Parliamentary had insisted upon the war, who had insisted upon its institutions continuation by the invasion of the Crimea, now disappointed at its want of success, were apparently determined to supersede the executive power, and to take the management of the war into their own hands. As Prince Albert was reported to have said, our Parliamentary institutions were upon their trial. The question which had to be answered was whether a great war could be carried to a successful conclusion under the blaze of publicity, when every action was exposed not only to the criticism and discussion of the press, but also to the more formidable and dangerous demands of party warfare within the walls of Parliament. And it seemed now as though the people had gone far towards accepting the idea that our Parliamentary system had failed to produce an executive of sufficient strength to perform its duty under these conditions.

The following changes subsequently took place in July 1855:

THE crisis was brought to an end for the time by the formation of a Ministry under Lord Palmerston. Lord John Russell at the

Palmerston's
Ministry.

head of the Whigs, Lord Derby at the head of the Conservatives, attempted the task in vain. As at the last crisis in 1852, a coalition appeared necessary to command success, and it resulted that the same Ministers, with the exception

Feb. 10, 1855.

1855]

THE NEW MINISTRY

273

only of Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Newcastle, returned to office. but these two statesmen had held the most important places, the one as Prime Minister, the other as War Secretary; their successors were men of very different character. Lord Aberdeen had from the first been half-hearted in the war, which he had entered against his own convictions, and which, though acting loyally in union with his colleagues, he had always detested. The Duke of Newcastle, to whom almost accidentally the Ministry of War had fallen, was a man of much will and energy, but had displayed no pre-eminent gifts for the office. He had been originally appointed to the Secretaryship of the Colonies, to which the Ministry of War was attached, the business of the War Office being carried on by the Secretary at War. When hostilities broke out it was thought desirable to separate the departments, and on the choice being offered to him the Duke of Newcastle had chosen the more important and arduous. The new Premier was a man whose capacity for work, command of detail, and extraordinary determination were well known, and who had throughout been the leader of the war party in the Cabinet; while Lord Panmure, the new War Secretary, somewhat rugged and violent, had already (as Mr. Fox Maule) executed the duties of Secretary at War in Lord John Russell's administration with thorough ability and success. For the instant therefore the nation was satisfied with

the change.

Reconstitution

Feb. 22.

Yet, as originally constituted, the Ministry lasted but a few days. The question at once arose whether the Government should allow or resist the appointment of Mr. Roebuck's of the Ministry. Committee. A Parliamentary Committee to supervise the action of the executive appeared to the Peelites in the Cabinet so fraught with danger to the Constitution that, when Lord Palmerston declared it impossible to resist the late vote of the House, they thought it right to resign. The places of the outgoing MinistersSir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Sidney Herbert-were taken respectively by Sir Charles Wood, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and Lord John Russell, and thus what was in fact a purely Whig administration, under a new leader, was formed. Fully awake to the possible danger of the Committee-yet believing it impossible for the Government to refuse it-the Premier attempted to lessen any evil effect it might have by obtaining the leave of the House to nominate it himself. Almost as a matter of course Mr. Roebuck, its originator, was appointed Chairman, and immediately set to work with extreme energy to collect information and prepare the report.

VICT.

S

administration.

Meanwhile a great accession of vigour was at once shown in the Vigorous War War administration. Changes were made by which the army, as far as discipline was concerned, passed entirely into the hands of the Commander-in-Chief. A special Board was appointed to superintend the transport service. Two officers were despatched to examine into the reported deficiency of the commissariat; and General Simpson, with the title of Chief of the Staff, an office hitherto unknown in the English army, was sent out with instructions to inquire carefully into the conduct of the departments of the Quartermaster and Adjutant-General. It seemed possible that affairs were taking a better turn. The Duke of Newcastle, during his term of office, had recommended the formation of a railway from Balaclava, and this, under private contract with a great industrial firm, was now rapidly pressed on. Lord Palmerston, who had already distinguished himself at the Home Office by his zeal for sanitary improvements, took measures for inquiring into and remedying the deficiences in the arrangements of that description both in the Crimea and in the hospitals at Scutari. And for a while there was a renewed hope that a Congress sitting at Vienna (at which England was represented by Lord John Russell) might produce a plan which should bring the war to a happy conclusion-a hope rendered stronger by the unexpected death of the Emperor of Russia in the beginning of March.

The Vienna
Conference.
March 5 to
June 4.

But any expectations thus raised proved illusory. The Conference at Vienna had been summoned by Austria, which was interested before all other countries, except perhaps England, in the maintenance of Turkish independence, and yet bound by ties of gratitude and much political sympathy to the Czar. The demands of the Allies were formulated under four heads. These were the release of the Principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia from Russian control; the free navigation of the mouths of the Danube; the modification of former treaties, so as to prevent the undue preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea; and the abandonment, on the part of the Czar, of his claim to exclusive protectorate over the Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire. On summoning the Conference, Austria had stated that, if upon the basis of these four points negotiation should fail, the defensive treaty already existing between her and the Western Powers should be changed into an offensive alliance. The Conference met on the 5th of March, and the Russian representatives accepted without difficulty the principle of the first and second points. But Russia had all

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275

along pretended to regard the war as a crusade, and in accordance with this view desired the priority of the religious question. This the English and French representatives refused to consider until the political question, which to them was much more important, had been settled. It was upon the third point therefore that the difficulties arose which brought the Conference to an end. The English and French ambassadors had been instructed to insist upon some limitation, by treaty, of the Russian Black Sea navy. Regarding any such formal limitation imposed upon them by the European Powers as derogatory to their honour, the Russian negotiators absolutely refused to accede to this suggestion, but were willing to allow the entire opening of the Black Sea to the war-ships of all nations, or to arrange by private treaty with the Porte some practical limitation of their own navy. The first of these proposals infringed the sovereign rights of the Sultan, who possessed both sides of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus; the second, rejected by the Turks, who were bound to negotiate only in common with the Allies, also left open the door to the skill of the Russian negotiators treating with a Power avowedly weaker than their own. The English and French ambassadors therefore, regarding such a plan as inadmissible, alleged the strict character of their instructions, and refused to consider it. The Conference was thus practically closed. But on the 4th of June Austria, through Count Buol, the President of the Conference, produced a fresh suggestion, not in fact much differing from that of Russia. He proposed that the naval equality of Russia and Turkey should be secured by a treaty between the two Powers, that the number of ships possessed by either should not exceed that of the present number of the Russian Black Sea fleet, that the Dardanelles should continue to be closed, but that by a firman two frigates of each of the other contracting parties should be allowed to enter the Black Sea; the terms of the separate treaty between Russia and Turkey were to form a part of the general treaty. Lord John Russell and the French ambassador had already left Vienna, but the representatives of England, France, and Turkey all declined to listen to the Austrian proposals, and the Conference was finally closed. Austria considered that by proposing a possible solution, and finding it rejected by the Allies, she had performed her duty, and refused to make the failure of the Conference a casus belli, as the English had expected. Her conduct excited much anger in England; her refusal to join in the war was regarded as a breach of contract; and it was further pointed out, as an illustration of her selfish conduct, that the first two points,