Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/235

 SDFFERINGS OF THE ARMIES. IDl from causes more distant, we have not failed to chap. see ; and, upon the whole, if so one may speak, L 1 have given what I thought the true pedigree of each detected mischief, doing this, not so much hy the process of first pointing out a defect, and then tracing it to some hapless ad- ministrator, but rather by antecedently show- ing under what conditions it was that public servants undertook at short notice to winter troops on the Chersonese, and then coming down step by step to the actual result of their efforts. It may seem that, under this method, the blame I impute falls but lightly — falls indeed with a weight ill-proportioned to the greatness of the calamity suffered ; but the simple truth is, as I have shown, that the Monarchical part of our system had so cumbered the action of Eng- land as to prevent her from wearing the harness required for modern war ; and of course, to show this was to destroy that presumption against public functionaries which miscarriage had seem- ed to warrant. After once exposing the cause which had not only kept our bureaucracies in a broken, dispersed condition, but even pre- vented this nation from having a real War Department, I found little else that deserved heavy, unsparing blame. Although furnished — nay, laden — with immensely abundant means of learning the truth, I saw no flagitious delin- quencies, no huge, glaring, monstrous defaults which, in seeking to account for the miseries endured by our troops, could be honestly ascribed