ate. The short truth seems to be that Graham, Gladstone, and
Palmerston were none of them emphatic or explicit enough beforehand on
the refusal of the committee when the government was formed, though the
intention to refuse was no doubt both stated and understood. Graham
admitted afterwards that this omission was a mistake. The world would be
astonished if it knew how often in the pressure of great affairs men's
sight proves short. After the language used by Mr. Gladstone about the
inquiry, we cannot wonder that he should have been slow to acquiesce.
The result in time entirely justified his description of the Sebastopol
committee.[347] But right as was his judgment on the merits, yet the
case was hardly urgent enough to make withdrawal politic or wise. Idle
gossip long prevailed, that Graham could not forgive Palmerston for not
having (as he thought) helped to defend him in the matter of opening
Mazzini's letters; that from the first he was bent on overthrowing the
new minister; that he worked on Gladstone; and that the alleged reason
why they left was not the real one. All the evidence is the other way;
that Graham could not resist the obvious want of the confidence of
parliament, and that Gladstone could not bear a futile and perilous
inquiry. That they both regretted that they had yielded to
over-persuasion in joining, against their own feelings and judgment, is
certain. Graham even wrote to Mr. Gladstone in the following summer that
his assent to joining Palmerston was perhaps the greatest mistake of his
public life. In Mr. Gladstone's case, the transaction gave a rude and
protracted shock to his public influence.

LORD PALMERSTON'S REIGN

Lord Palmerston meanwhile sat tight in his saddle. When the crisis first
began, Roebuck in energetic language had urged him to sweep the Peelites
from his path, and at any rate he now very steadily went on without
them. Everybody took for granted that his administration would be
temporary. Mr. Gladstone himself gave it a twelvemonth at most. As it
happened, Lord Palmerston was in fact, with one brief interruption,
installed for a decade. He was seventy-one; he had been nearly forty
years in office; he had worked at the admiralty, war department, foreign
office, home office; he had served under ten prime ministers--Portland,
Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Wellington, Grey, Melbourne,
Russell, Aberdeen. He was not more than loosely attached to the wh