the harbour fleet to be destroyed. If you will so far favour me, I
should be gratified by having an opportunity of demonstrating to your
strong mind, free from professional bias, the fact that combustible
ships may be not only placed on a parity with stone forts fitted to fire
red-hot shot, but secured from injury more effectually than if incased
in iron."

Sir James Graham's answer was, like its forerunners, complimentary, but
nothing more. "I can never cease," he wrote, "to do justice to your
patriotic desire to serve your country, which is evinced by your desire
to encounter, in your own person, the dangers attendant on your
experiment, and not to transfer the hazard of the enterprise to others."
But to the enterprise itself he would give no sanction. "Your plans," he
said, "by my desire were submitted to the consideration of most
competent naval and military officers, whose impartial judgment cannot
be impugned, and, on the whole, they did not recommend the trial of the
experiment which you are anxious to make. Neither Lord Aberdeen nor I
can venture to place our individual opinions in opposition to a recorded
judgment of the highest authority on a question which is purely
professional. I see no advantage, therefore, in renewing the discussion
with you at the present moment."

Had the "impartial judgment" by which Sir James Graham held himself
bound been adverse to the principle of Lord Dundonald's plans, or
declared them to be anything more than "inexpedient in present
circumstances," more weight might have been attached to it; although
even then he could have pointed to the opposite verdict, given in 1847,
by other judges quite as impartial and competent, who, while objecting
to part of them on the score of their deadly efficacy, had officially
announced their belief in the applicability of another part--the part of
which Lord Dundonald now proposed to make most use--and recommended its
adoption "when the opportunity of employing it may occur."

He therefore refused to be thwarted in his efforts to render to his
country the great service that he considered to be in his power, and Sir
Charles Napier's removal from the command of the Baltic fleet, in
January, 1855, gave him an opportunity of offering to use that power
under conditions that would relieve the Admiralty of all direct
responsibility in the event of his failure. "I am much gratified," he
said in another letter to Sir James Graham, "to learn that her mo