re banded together in office; but
the vivifying influences of unity of conviction and common sentiment
were absent from its deliberations. After all, as Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton drily remarked when the inevitable crisis arose, there is 'one
indisputable element of a Coalition Government, and that is that its
members should coalesce.' As a matter of fact, they not only drifted
into war but drifted apart. 'It is a powerful team and will require good
driving,' was the comment of a shrewd political observer. 'There are
some odd tempers and queer ways among them.'

[Sidenote: ABERDEEN AS DRIVER]

Lord Aberdeen had many virtues, but he was not a good driver, and when
the horses grew restive and kicked over the traces, he lacked nerve,
hesitated, and was lost. Trained for political life at the side of
Pitt,[30] after a distinguished career in diplomacy, which made him
known in all the Courts of Europe, he entered the Cabinet of the Duke of
Wellington in 1828, and afterwards held the post of Secretary for the
Colonies in the first Peel Administration of 1834, and that of Secretary
for Foreign Affairs during Sir Robert's final spell of power in the
years 1841-46. He never sat in the House of Commons, but, though a Tory
peer, he voted for Catholic Emancipation. He swiftly fell into line,
however, with his party, and recorded his vote against the Reform Bill.
He never, perhaps, quite understood the temper of a popular assembly,
for he was a shy, reserved man, sparing in speech and punctilious in
manner. Close association with Wellington and Peel had, of course, done
much to shape his outlook on affairs, and much acquaintance with the
etiquette of foreign Courts had insensibly led him to cultivate the
habit of formal reserve. Born in the same year as Palmerston, the
Premier possessed neither the openness to new ideas nor the vivacity of
his masterful colleague; in fact, Lord Aberdeen at sixty-eight, unlike
Lord Palmerston, was an old man in temperament, as well as conservative,
in the sense of one not given to change. Yet, it is only fair to add
that, if Aberdeen's views of foreign policy were of a somewhat
stereotyped kind, he was, at all events at this period in their careers,
more progressive on home policy than Palmerston, who was too much
inclined not to move for the social welfare of the people before he was
compelled.

The new Ministry ran well until it was hindered by complications in the
East. In the middle of Februar