herefore, places them so
far in a false position, and it runs the risk of placing the sovereign
himself in one equally false and unpleasant, since, if the opinions
expressed or the advice given fail of their effect, the adviser is so
far lowered in the eyes of his correspondent and of the world.

As has been incidentally mentioned, in the spring of 1854 war broke out
with Russia, nominally on account of the Sultan's refusal to concede
some of the Czar's demands concerning the condition of the Greek Church
in Palestine, but more really because, believing the Turkish empire to
be in the last stage of decay, he hoped by hastening its destruction to
obtain the lion's share of its spoils. And for the first time for two
centuries an English and French army stood together in a field of battle
as allies. In the field our armies were invariably victorious,
inflicting severe defeats on the enemy at Alma and Inkerman, and
wresting from them the mighty fortress of Sebastopol, in the Crimea,
which hitherto they had believed to be absolutely impregnable. Our fleet
was, if possible, still more triumphant, destroying Bomarsund and
Sweaborg, in the Baltic, without the Russian ships daring to fire a
single gun in their defence, while their Black Sea fleet was even sunk
by its own admiral, as the only expedient to save it from capture. And
in the spring of 1856 the war was terminated by a treaty of peace, in
which, for the first time since the days of Peter the Great, Russia was
compelled to submit to a cession of territory. But (it may almost be
said) to the credit of the nation these successes, glorious and
substantial as they were, made at the time scarcely so great an
impression on the people as the hardships which, in the first winter of
the war, our troops suffered from the defective organization of our
commissariat. Want of shelter and want of food proved more destructive
than the Russian cannon; presently our gallant soldiers were reported to
be perishing by hundreds for lack of common necessaries; and the news
awakened so clamorous a discontent throughout the whole of the United
Kingdom as led to another change of ministry, and Lord Aberdeen was
succeeded by Lord Palmerston. While a war on so large a scale was being
waged there was but little time to spare for the work of the legislator,
though it is not foreign to our subject to relate that in 1855 the last
of those taxes which the political economists denounced as taxes on
know