Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/124

 80 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, principles of constitutional rule had been more • or less cogently swaying the direction and man- agement of England's military resources during a period of nearly a quarter of a century ; so that after those years of comparative exemption from the * personal ' incubus — years equalling each a whole decade of common times — to go laying once more on her shoulders the old, encum boring yoke was — not to be merely continuing a preposterous system, but rather — to inflict a new injury on the State by old and long-disused means. upon tii.f man who sacrificed the welfare of his country on sent and the the gross, reeking altar of Self; and his Minis- MiTiist/>rs O > o ' BiamejuBtiy The guilt of the Eegent was simply that of a attaching upon tlio Ptince Re gent and t ^linisters ^^ ' — ters must be condemned for subserviency, because they stood by unresisting, and even abetting, whilst a Eoyal claim long in abeyance was not only used to take from them tlieir long-held authority in military concerns, but to dismantle and leave unreplaced a State institution which was then, as now, strictly essential to the safety and welfare of the State. It is hard to see how the Eegent and his Ministers could liave anywhere found an excuse for tlms agreeing between them to cripple, to mutilate England. They knew, though inertly, that in even their times — times rude by com- parison with ours — the strife of nations was no longer a work so free from complexity that the preparations for maintaining it could be pru- dently left to the moment when a rupture is going to take place, and that a people which dispenses with a sound War Department in