his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs
to state that the re-appointment of the Committee on the Organisation
of the Military Departments was unavoidable. That Committee had
been affirmed by the House of Commons and consented to by the late
Government, and had begun its sittings; but when a Dissolution of
Parliament was announced, it suspended its further sittings, with the
understanding that it should be revived in the new Parliament; and to
have departed from that understanding would have been impossible. That
which Viscount Palmerston intended to convey in what he said to your
Majesty on the subject was, that the evidence given by Lord Panmure
might be deemed as having fully set aside the objection urged against
the present organisation by persons unacquainted with the bearing upon
it of the fundamental principles of the Constitution, namely, that the
Crown acts in regard to Military matters without having any official
adviser responsible for its acts. Such a condition of things, if it
could exist, would be at variance with the fundamental principles
of the British Constitution, and would be fraught with danger to the
Crown, because then the Sovereign would be held personally answerable
for administrative acts, and would be brought personally in conflict
in possible cases with public opinion, a most dangerous condition for
a Sovereign to be placed in.

The maxim of the British Constitution is that the Sovereign can do
no wrong, but that does not mean that no wrong can be done by Royal
authority; it means that if wrong be done, the public servant who
advised the act, and not the Sovereign, must be held answerable for
the wrongdoing.

But the Ministers of the Crown for the time being are the persons who
are constitutionally held answerable for all administrative acts in
the last resort, and that was the pith and substance of the evidence
given by Lord Panmure. Those persons who want to make great changes
in the existing arrangements were much vexed and disappointed by that
evidence, and the attempt made yesterday to put off the Committee till
next year on the ground that the evidence now to be taken would be
one-sided only, and would tend to create erroneous impressions, was
founded upon those feelings of disappointment.

Viscount Palmerston submits names of the persons whom Mr Sidney
Herbert proposes to appoint on the Committee, and they seem to be well
chosen.

_Lord John Russell to Queen Victoria._