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 284 THE WINTER 'J'lJOUBLES. CHAP. IX. General import of Upon the whole, it may be said that, so far as concerned its bearing upon the subsequent conduct of the war, the good that phainly re- of iifSy. suited from this modification of the Government did not lie so distinctly in the Ministerial changes themselves, but rather in what they expressed. The substitution of Lord Palmer- ston for Lord Aberdeen expressed on the part of the country a determination to be hearty and strenuous in the conduct of the war ; whilst the fate of the Duke of Newcastle, sent back into private life, was at once a sacrifice and a warn- ing — a sacrifice of the victim not shown to be guilty, but (like the ram slain by Abraham) opportunely caught in a thicket, and therefore offered up in expiation of what our troops had endured — a warning to any future administrator, saying sharply, if not even brutally, that in work so momentous as the due supply of our army, he must not only act irreproachably, but also contrive not to fail. VL The war The ucw Government soon adopted some of the new mcasures fur the better carrying on of the war. ment. It recalled Sir John Burgoyne, and appointed General Sir Harry Jones to command our En- gineers in the Crimea. (^^) It began to re- organise our land-transport service under Colonel M'Murdo. It charged two Commissioners, Sir John M'Neill and Colonel Tullocli to visit our Commissariat system with a rigid enquiry, to be