Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/126

 82 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, our military administration tliroughout the term ' of the Eegency, throughout the two reigns that followed ; and even after that time, during many a year, there was no removal of the constitutional deformity, no abatement of the evil it caused. A due sense of justice, however, commands us to remember and own that, before our quarrel with Russia, and indeed until several years after- wards, the idea of constituting a War Depart- ment upon sound principles had not passed through that long ordeal of discussion which is commonly required in England for the ripening of great public questions ; and the Queen's loyal subjects have now a fair warrant for saying that if (after having been mastered and duly adjudged by our statesmen) the subject had come up for Royal decision in the earlier years of her reign, she would have graciously consented to remove the one obstacle which, till lately, prevented her country from having a sound War Depart- ment. (2^) England then might have entered upon her war against Ru.ssia with institutions apt for the task, and no longer deformed by a rivalry between the State and the Court. Result of So, then, now we have plainly discerned that ' the three new administrative forces ' which made our great captain's work possible did not any of them act on events till the autumn of 1809 ; that they none of them lasted beyond the year 1816 ; and that thus belonging ex- clusively to a well-defined interval, they formed the enquiry.