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 THE DEMEANOUR OF ENGLAND. 199 grievous truth, or for honour's sake tell it them chap. IX- frankly, and so venture to apprise the enemy of the desperate state of weakness to which his army had been reduced ? ^My belief is that in tliis dilemma, Lord Eag- lan did not consciously formulate for himself any settled design, and that the spirit and general tenor of his correspondence with the Home Gov- ernment resulted quite naturally from, on the one hand, his determination to conceal no mate- rial facts, and on the other, from an inborn antagonism to the feelings, the impulses, and the language of alarmists which allied itself in his mind with a wise and wholesome desire to encourage rather than frighten the Queen's Min- isters — men engaged, he well knew, as he was himself, in doing all that was possible for his suffering, dwindling army. But whether he fol- lowed a plan, or was only (as I have imagined) pursuing the path of strict duty and obeying his natural feelings, the course he adopted was this : Upon all matters touching the state and prospects character of of his troops, their numbers, their losses, their lan'scorre- 1 1 1 • T 1 • spondence health, their supplies, their wants, and the means with the . ,1. • • 1 UomeGov- of meeting them, his communications to the emment. Home Government were so constant, so full, so accurate, so clear in their general statements, so precise in their more minute details, that (along with the enclosed ' morning states,' to which he was continually invoking attention) they formed a complete repertory of all that a Minister in London who was labouring for the welfare of our army could be usefully made to know. But