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a great knowledge of the duties that belonged | to the office. He was an army reformer in a moderate degree, and had displayed remarkable talent in relation to the various details of military organization. For twenty years, as Mr. Fox Maule, he had held a distinguished position in parliament, and whenever his party was in power had satisfactorily filled offices of greater or less importance. His father, the youngest son of the eighth Earl of Dalhousie, had changed his name from Ramsay to Maule on succeeding through his grandmother to the estates of the old earls of Panmure, whose title he took when he was raised to the peerage in 1831. Mr. Fox Maule, who had succeeded to the title only just before the formation of the Aberdeen government, had served twelve years as an officer of the 79th Highlanders, and was thirty-four years old before he entered the civil service of the country. In November, 1842, he had been elected Lord-rector of the University of Glasgow, in 1849 became Lord-lieutenant of Forfarshire, and in 1853 lord-keeper of the privy seal of Scotland. As under secretary of state for the home department in the government of Lord Melbourne he had shown such business aptitude that he was afterwards nominated vice-president of the Board of Trade; but it was in the war department that he displayed the marked ability which led to his being appointed to the onerous position which he accepted under Lord Palmerston. A cheerful, rather jovial, witty man, but with a certain dignity, which, in conjunction with his appearance, stamped him as belonging rather to the old school of manners. There was in his appearance something to remind one of Elliston the theatrical manager, and of the fashion of the best men of the fourth Georgian period. A fur-collared cloak, a full-bosomed coat, and what has been called "a cataract of black satin," forming a stock fastened with a double pin; a face clean shaven, and neatly brushed curling hair; this is the portrait of Lord Panmure at the time of which we are speaking. There was much fun in the expression of his mouth, much penetration in his eyes, and he was, in fact, distinguished for his ready bonhomie, except when he had an attack of gout, and, as

it was said, remained shut up in his room, where nobody was admitted to speak to him except on urgent business.

Lord Palmerston appealed to the house to support a government which he said he thought would be able to carry on public affairs. It contained, he believed, sufficient administrative ability, sufficient political sagacity, sufficient patriotism and determination to justify him in asking the house and the country for support in the present critical state of our national affairs. In sketching the intentions of the government he said that the secretary of the admiralty had established a board to superintend the transport service at sea. We were engaged in warlike operations with France as an ally, but we had not the means of sending so many men into the field as France, and it was but fair that we should make some return to France in the shape of additional naval arrangements. He was convinced that the establishment of that board would lead to increased economy and efficiency in that department. Well-grounded complaints having been made as to the condition of our war-hospitals, it was intended to send out three civilians for the purpose of making good sanitary arrangements for the hospitals, camps, and ships, and from their scientific labours he anticipated the greatest advantages. No means would be omitted to reinforce the army in due time. Charged as the government was with the interests of a great nation, they had to look not only to the means of carrying on the war with great vigour, but it was their duty to take all measures in their power to put an end to it. They had been informed that certain arrangements agreed to between England and France had been submitted to Austria, and adopted by Russia as the basis of negotiation. In order that these negotiations might be most solemnly conducted they proposed to Lord John Russell to undertake the duty, being convinced that when they were placed in the hands of a man so generally respected at home and so well known throughout Europe, if their efforts should fail they would stand acquitted from blame. The noble lord would first proceed to Paris, thence to Berlin, where

MR. ROEBUCK PRESSES HIS RESOLUTION.

he would be in communication with the King of Prussia, and although some time might elapse before his arrival in Vienna, the time he spent in those two capitals would not be thrown away.

Mr. Layard, however, was still in bitter opposition to the government, though the new administration had begun its work with energy, and Lord Panmure had already put forward a plan for obtaining more recruits by enlisting experienced men for shorter periods of two or three years, instead of the young fellows who, being unseasoned, died on being despatched to the Crimea. Mr. Layard was not to be pacified, and in the House of Commons rose to "call attention to the existing state of affairs." The country, he asserted, stood on the brink of ruin-it had fallen into the abyss of disgrace, and had become the laughing-stock of Europe. The new ministry differed little from the last. Was Lord Palmerston willing to accept peace on any terms? Was the country going to engage in prolonged hostilities? Was it proposed to engage on our behalf oppressed nationalities? Would the Circassians be assisted? In short, what was the government going to do? The people of England demanded a thorough reform. What the country wanted was not septuagenarian experience, but more of youthful activity and energy. He commended the plan of the French revolutionary convention, and intimated that it would be well if the house should send out a commission of its own members to inquire and to regulate proceedings in the Crimea. Lord Palmerston's retort was ready. He suggested that it might be satisfactory to the house to take the honourable member at his word, and to add to the direction that he and his colleagues should proceed instantly to the Crimea, the further instruction that they should remain there during the rest of the session. This was of course received with great laughter; but Mr. Roebuck's motion still hung over the government, and this was no laughing matter. It would seem to have been unreasonable that a committee of inquiry levelled against one administration should be continued against another which had neither been tried nor found wanting;

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but it was contended that there had been no real change of ministry-that the same men remained, but were distributed in different offices. On these grounds Mr. Disraeli demanded the prosecution of the inquiry by a select committee, in accordance with Mr. Roebuck's motion, satirically basing the demand upon the recommendation of Lord John Russell the first minister of the crown in this house—the man of whom as a member, irrespective of all party politics, this house is most proud the man who had previously been prime minister of England for a long period of years the man whose qualities, whose sagacity, whose wisdom, whose statesmanlike mind have been just eulogized by the first minister on the treasury bench-a man of such qualities, that though he had intentionally destroyed his late colleagues, they have already employed him upon an august mission -this eminent person comes down to parliament and tells you that although as a minister of the crown he cannot, with all the advantages of official experience, penetrate the mystery of the national calamity that has occurred, that he thinks inquiry ought to be granted, as the plea for it is irresistible." Mr. Disraeli then went on to say that after this opinion had been endorsed by a majority almost unprecedented in the records of parliament, they were told that the House of Commons was to stultify itself—to recede from the ground which it so triumphantly occupied-to rescind the resolution which it so solemnly affirmed.

Mr. Roebuck, however, had no intention to recede from his original proposal; he had been suffering from illness, but he pressed the inquiry with renewed energy. Lord Palmerston, believing that to make the motion for an inquiry into one of want of confidence would, in the condition of the public temper, again break up the government and provoke another crisis, consented to the appointment of a select committee. The country, it was argued, was bent on having the inquiry, and therefore it was that the House of Commons insisted upon it, and not from hostility to the new ministry. Had such hostility existed, the house, it was felt, would not have voted, as they had just done, without a murmur, largely

increased estimates for the purpose of increasing the strength of both army and navy.

With these conclusions, however, Mr. Gladstone and some other influential members of the new administration did not agree, or at all events they felt that they could not now consistently consent to an inquiry which they had previously affirmed was not only unnecessary but impolitic. They were opposed to the inquiry, at such a juncture, as a breach of constitutional principle and a dangerous precedent. Sir James Graham said that he could not consent to the appointment of a committee which included no member of the government, and he was also opposed to a select committee. If secret, its investigations could not be checked by public opinion; and if open, the evidence taken would be immediately made public and canvassed in a manner injurious to the public service. Mr. Sidney Herbert declared that as a vote of censure the motion for the committee was valueless, while as an inquiry it would be a mere sham. Mr. Gladstone significantly represented that the committee, being neither for punishment nor remedy, must be for government, and could not fail to deprive the executive of its most important functions. All three, therefore, announced their intention to retire from the ministry, and they were followed by Mr. Cardwell; so that the Palmerston government was at the outset considerably shaken; but it was felt that it had become necessary to keep it together on the best terms possible, for another serious crisis would have been mischievous while negotiations were supposed to be pending, and yet it was necessary to prepare for a vigorous prosecution of the war. On this subject--the success of negotiation or the continuance of war-opinion was divided; but most people seemed to share Lord Palmerston's doubts of the good faith of the czar, and were for increased armaments. Mr. Bright and those who agreed with him, however, were of a different opinion, and thought that they saw in the proposed negotiations at Vienna an opportunity which the Emperor of Russia would accept for bringing hostilities to a close. During the debate which followed the explanations of the retiring ministers, he

made a fervent, an impassioned appeal to the house and to Lord Palmerston to stay the war.

"You are not pretending to conquer territory," he said; "you are not pretending to hold fortified or unfortified towns; you have offered terms of peace, which, as I understand them, I do not say are not moderate; and breathes there a man in this house, or in this country, whose appetite for blood is so insatiable that even when terms of peace have been offered and accepted, he pines for that assault in which, of Russian, Turk, French, and English, as sure as one man dies, 20,000 corpses will strew the streets of Sebastopol? I say I should like to ask the noble lord-and I am sure that he will feel, and that this house will feel, that I am speaking in no unfriendly manner towards the government of which he is at the head. I should like to know, and I venture to hope that it is so, if the noble lord, the member for London, has power at the earliest stage of these proceedings at Vienna at which it can properly be done and I should think that it might properly be done at a very early stage-to adopt a course by which all further waste of human life may be put an end to, and further animosity between three great nations be, as far as possible, prevented? I appeal to the noble lord at the head of the government and to this house; I am not now complaining of the terms of peace nor, indeed, of anything that has been done; but I wish to suggest to this house what, I believe, thousands and tens of thousands of the most educated and of the most Christian portion of the people of this country are feeling upon this subject, although, indeed, in the midst of a certain clamour in the country, they do not give public expression to their feelings. I cannot but notice in speaking to gentlemen who sit on either side of this house, or in speaking to any one I meet between this house and any of those localities we frequent when this house is up-I cannot, I say, but notice that an uneasy feeling exists as to the news which may arrive by the very next mail from the East. I do not suppose that your troops are to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that they will be driven into the sea; but

DEATH OF THE CZAR NICHOLAS.

I am certain that many homes in England, in which there now exists a fond hope that the distant one may return; many such homes may be rendered desolate when the next mail shall arrive. The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal. I tell the noble lord, that if he be ready honestly and frankly to endeavour, by the negotiations about to be opened at Vienna, to put an end to this war, no word of mine, no vote of mine, will be given to shake his power for one single moment, or to change his position in this house. I am sure that the noble lord is not inaccessible to appeals made to him from honest motives, and with no unfriendly feeling. The noble lord has been for more than forty years a member of this house. Before I was born he sat upon the treasury bench, and he has spent his life in the service of his country. He is no longer young, and his life has extended almost to the term allotted to man. I would ask, I would entreat the noble lord to take a course which, when he looks back upon his whole political careerwhatever he may therein find to be pleased with, whatever to regret-cannot but be a source of gratification to him. By adopting that course he would have the satisfaction of reflecting that, having obtained the object of his laudable ambition-having become the foremost subject of the crown, the director of, it may be, the destinies of his country and the presiding genius in her councils-he had achieved a still higher and nobler ambition: that he had returned the sword to the scabbard-that at his word torrents of blood had ceased to flow-that he had restored tranquillity to Europe, and saved this country from the indescribable calamities of war."

The effect of the appeal on the critical sense of the house was very great, and the impressive peroration, as fine a piece of oratory as

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had ever been heard in the House of Commons, was listened to with a profound and impressive silence which was almost painful in its intensity, and might by a less able or less earnest speaker have been too easily turned into a laugh by some misplaced word. Such silence is often only relieved by some half hysterical outburst; but on this occasion it was deep and unbroken. "The beating of the wings" seemed for a moment possible, for in that almost breathless hush the house seemed to be listening for something even beyond the words of him who addressed them.

The new trial to the ministry was sharp, but it was short; and the concession of Lord Palmerston to what he believed to be the demand of the country having been made for the purpose of avoiding the inconvenience and danger of the government being again in abeyance, it was necessary to fill up the vacant places without delay. Sir G. C. Lewis therefore succeeded Mr. Gladstone as chancellor of the exchequer. Sir C. Wood replaced Sir James Graham at the admiralty; Mr. Vernon Smith went to the board of control, and Lord Stanley of Alderley to the board of trade. At the same time Sir Robert Peel (the son of the repealer of the corn-laws) was made a lord of the admiralty, and Mr. Harrison became secretary for Ireland. Lord John Russell was nominated colonial secretary in place of Mr. Sidney Herbert, the appointment reaching him as he was on his way to Vienna.

Before the conferences could be commenced, and while the new government was settling into its place, and perhaps reckoning the advantages that had been gained by the victory of Omar Pasha, who, aided by the British fleet, had repelled and defeated the attack made by 40,000 Russians under General Liprandi on the Turkish position at Eupatoria; an event happened which startled and impressed Europe, and gave a new direction to the hopes of those who were most anxious for the conclusion of a lasting peace.

On the 2d of March the Czar Nicholas of Russia lay dead. It almost seemed as though he could not survive the intelligence that a smaller force of the despised Turks had beaten back his regiments at Eupatoria. Soon after

that news reached him he became delirious; | frost continued. "Sire," said one of his

physicians, "there is not in the whole army a military surgeon who would permit a common soldier to quit the hospital in the state iu which you are, for he would be sure that his patient would re-enter it still worse." ""Tis well, gentlemen," answered the emperor; "you have done your duty, now I am going to do mine;" and upon this he entered the sledge. In passing along the ranks of his soldiers his air of suffering and continual cough betrayed his condition. On his return he said, "I am bathed in perspiration." Before going home he called upon Prince Dolgorouki, the minister of war, who was ill, and, more prudent for him than for himself, he urged him not to go out too soon. He passed the evening with the empress, but complained of cold and kept on his cloak.

but it is not therefore to be assumed that his fatal illness was attributable to reverses, which, in spite of the continued hold upon Sebastopol, had befallen the Russian arms. In another sense, however, he may be said to have hazarded his life in the war and lost it. General February had not proved to be an ally. The weather, inclement and rigorous in the Crimea, was almost insupportable at St. Petersburg to anybody who was exposed to its severity, especially to one who had been suffering from influenza, and refused to take even ordinary precautions for preventing a worse disorder. The chief anxiety of the Emperor Nicholas, with regard to his own health, was to observe a regimen which would prevent corpulency, of which he had a peculiar dread; and this may account for many of his active and almost restless habits, as well as for his usual abstemiousness. He had during the bitterest weather persisted in attending reviews of the troops and inspecting defences. He had been on the ice to examine the fortifications of Cronstadt, and, in fact, gave himself no leisure and no repose in preparing for the exigencies of the conflict which he had challenged. He even seemed to have a presentiment of death, occasioned either by his gloomy reception of the news of repeated defeat in the Crimea, or from a sense of departing strength; but he would relax no exertion even though the affection of the chest, from which he had begun to suffer, became more serious. It was not till Dr. Mandt expressed an earnest desire for a second physician to be summoned that he consented to consult Dr. Karell, his physician-in-ordinary, and agreed to remain in bed. The health of the empress was at this time so feeble that she also was confined to her own apartment, so that the emperor was without the consola-sician, sent for the hereditary prince and told tion which her presence might have afforded him. He daily grew worse, he was sleepless, and his cough was incessant. He could not tolerate a condition which imposed inactivity, and announced his determination to review a corps of infantry of the guard which was on its way to Lithuania. The weather was still intensely cold, and a hard

The result of his imprudent excursion was a serious relapse, which compelled him to remain in the small room which was his working cabinet, whence for some days he continued to issue orders respecting the defence of Sebastopol and the disposition of the army; but it was evident that his brain had become affected. The empress left her own apartments to attend upon him; but he continued, by the exercise of a powerful will, to fight against increasing weakness, and during the first days of Lent attended the religious services of the season in the usual manner. But after three or four days he was compelled to absent himself; and the empress, who was borne down with distress, then suggested to him the serious nature of his illness by proposing that he should receive the sacraments. For some time he did not or would not realize his dangerous condition; but at last, noticing the deep grief of the empress, he began to comprehend it, and having dismissed his phy

him that his recovery was hopeless. He then sent for his confessor, the archpriest Bajanoff, with whom, after having blessed the empress and the prince, who remained during the preliminary prayers, he was left alone, the empress and the czarowitch returning afterwards, when he took the communion. He then sent for all the members of his family, of whom he

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