Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/362

 318 THE WINTER TllOUBLES. ciTAP. and at once laughed away the air of mystery ^^- with which it had been introduced by saying that the Committee ' had not yet discovered any ' liorrible State secret which it was necessary to further debate, withdrew his motion, and defini- tively abandoned his project for making the appointed Committee become a secret tribunal. The labours The Committes proceeding with its labours miii'tTe. "'"" gave a happy disappointment to some at least of the prophecies which had ominously darkened its birth. The Committee had been directed to enquire, and enquire it did. It enquired with a vengeance. Except as regards public servants and others who were toiling in distant lands, or tra- versing distant seas, the Committee seems to have examined almost every one, from the late Prime Minister downwards, who might be judged capable of giving any part of the information that had to be sought.(^'') The Committee asked 21,421 questions, and received, one may say, a mucli more than corresponding quantity of answers; because it often occurred that from a witness briefly interrogated in only a few simple words there was elicited a lengthened statement replete with material facts, or a production of State papers bearing closely on the matter in hand. The statesmen and other personages examined had, apparently, every one of them, an unshrink- ing personal wish to make their disclosures com- plete by telling what they knew ; and, when any of them, for duty's sake, submitted that- the danger of harming the public service by disclo-
 * bury in eternal silence.' Mr Eoebuck, after