Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/111

 A EETROSPECTIVE ENQUIRY. 67 country about to be held by our troops ; and, chap. to meet this cogent necessity, the engine we _, 1_ speak of was framed — an engine bearing no likeness to our quaint institutions at home, but invented for the nonce, and established in dis- tant lands by a strong-willed vigorous general. Thus administrative labours which under other conditions would have had to be attempted in London devolved perforce on the general in command of our army, whether toiling in Portu- gal, or toiling in Spain, or at last in the south of France. And this shifting of the burthen was happily one which removed it from the shoulders of the weak to the shoulders of the strong, because, as we have seen, on the one hand, our curious old English institutions were inapt for the conduct of war ; and on the other — speaking now of that time when the grave, yet romantic enter- prise of the Peninsular war was definitely un- dertaken {^^) — we may say that the general thus laden with what, in a sense, may be fairly called ' Government business,' was equal to his arduous task. After gathering experience in the painful school of adversity, and losing liis superb soldiers by thousands because failing to provide for their wants, our great Wellington was becoming by practice not only an able ad- ministrator, but also — for his war-sustaining pur- poses — a consummate statesman ; and it must be owned that he had need of his strength when thus boldly advising and personally conducting a war in which England (with only such help as