Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/385

 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 353 after disclosed ; whilst the Austrian overture of c H A P. XII the 17th of April was — rightly — kept secret. '-. The secrecy had lasted some weeks, and our Gov- ernment and our people alike had gladly bidden farewell to all negotiations, and were simply in- tent on the strife, when an indiscreet statesman — not English — revealed the Austrian overture, affecting moreover to show, though not doing this at all perfectly, the action thereupon taken by Lord John Russell. The secrecy maintained by our Cabinet was wholly ' State secrecy,' altogether disjoined from any personal wish for concealment entertained by Lord John ; but people not seeing this fancied that they had made a discovery, prov- ing him to have flinched at Vienna from what was the plainly right course. How far this was from the truth we have been able to see. The chief cause of the mistake was, however, a sheer want of knowledge. In that time of war, ample reasons of State forbade the disclosures re- quired for showing the truth, the whole truth.* Of course, the same valid State reasons which enforced silence on the Cabinet sealed also the lips of Lord John ; and accordingly his resignation did nothing towards giving him freedom of speech. The House of Commons on the 24th of May entered upon a great debate on the subject of the war, including the Conferences, and (refusing to the Austrian proposal without laying stress on the prospects of the Sebastopol siege ; and this, of course, was not a subject with which to entertain the public — a public that included the enemy. VOL. VIII. Z
 * No one, for instance, could discuss the policy of accepting