st
gracious Majesty has been pleased to reserve the high dignity of Admiral
of the Fleet as a reward for services. Under this impression, permit me
to solicit the favour of being allowed to contend for that distinction,
not by reference again to opinions, which may prove fallacious, but by
actual experimental proof of the safety and facility of assailing
fortifications by my secret plans. By them, the damage and loss of life
sustained by the allied squadron in their late attack on the
fortifications of Sebastopol might have been partly if not wholly
averted, and probably a tenfold destruction inflicted on the enemy. If
this is admitted--and I do not think it can be disputed--I hope you will
allow me to demonstrate the general applicability of these simple,
comparatively costless, and in my opinion infallible means of
annihilating the power of all kinds of batteries that can be approached
to windward within half a mile. These plans have been entertained and
pondered over by me during forty years, and now again I offer to
explain, to test, and to put them in execution."

Sir James Graham's answer was very terse. "I have had the honour," he
wrote on the 23rd of January, "of receiving your lordship's letter, in
which you tender your services to take command of the Baltic Fleet. I
consider the tender highly honourable to you; but I cannot give any
other assurance."

No other assurance would have been of any avail. The Earl of Aberdeen's
Cabinet, having lost the confidence of the country, was dissolved almost
immediately after that letter was written, to be replaced by an
Administration in which Lord Palmerston was Premier, and Sir Charles
Wood First Lord of the Admiralty.

To Lord Palmerston the Earl of Dundonald wrote on the 13th of February.
"The high position of our country being at stake on the result of the
war," he said, "and our long-established naval renown pledged on the
successful conduct of affairs in the Baltic, I addressed my kind friend
Lord Lansdowne, who has been long conversant with the objects which, by
his advice, I now offer to your lordship's notice as First Minister of
the Crown, conjointly, if you judge proper, with that of the Cabinet
over which you preside." He then briefly described the principle of his
secret plan, adding, "I respectfully offer to execute this plan, and
answer for its success, against Cronstadt, and against all minor
strongholds in the Baltic."

Four weeks elapsed before that