Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/110

 66 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP. IV. The Wel- lington reign : its brief duration. Brief dura- tion of the three new administra- tive forces. The first of them : If this third new administrative force did not also originate with him to whom England owed the two first, it was still for the most part wielded with a strong and increasing desire to meet the objects he indicated ; and upon the whole, one may distinguish the sway which these three new forces exerted by calling it the Wellington reign. This reign did not last many years. Two out of the three new forces were each of such nature as to be perforce only conterminous with Wellington's campaigns. The third was one that miglit have been preserved to the great advantage of the country, but it was wilfully destroyed in 1816, and our system then relapsed into what it had been before the three new forces had come as yet into action. In that relapsed state our administrative system re- mained from 1816 to 1854; and accordingly, there was no such real likeness as the challeng- ing question assumes between the engine of State which ministered to Wellington's enter- prises and the one dragged out forty years after- wards to serve for the war against Russia. The first of the three new forces was an administrative engine established l)y Welling- ton personally at the seat of war. Wlien England under his counsels restrained her in- veterate passion for weakly-based ' Expeditions,' and resolved to fasten strongly on territories which Napoleon was minded to grasp, it fol- lowed of course that huge quantities of admin- istrative work would have to be done in the