Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/95

 A RETROSPECTIVE ENQUIRY. 51 Horse Guards — was accustomed to administer chap. military business ; and although, on the out- break of hostilities, his 'constitutional' rival ^^[{J^^'^^^. displaced him, and acceded by force of the ^anM*'"^'" ' standing compromise ' to a real belligerent power, the ' Government ' thus newly invested with warlike authority could not wield its new strength to advantage, being still, as before, un- furnished with any apt State machinery already formed for the purpose. There were then — in 1793 — only two Secretaries of State, one for Home, one for Foreign affairs. No War Depart- ment existed ; (•^) and even the actual commence- ment of hostilities in February 1793 was not immediately followed by changes af!'ecting the structure of our official system ; but in the follow- ing year (1794) a new office was established, and placed under a third Secretary of State, called the Secretary of State for War. (2) The then new office long afterwards became in a sense the nucleus of that great Department which now holds sway in Pall Mall ; but the task imposed on its Chief was not at first strictly administrative, being mainly that of corresponding un behalf of the ' Government ' at home with the generals handed over to its rule by force of the ' Letters of Service.'(^) The new Department was destined to have cast upon it in 1801 the Colonial business of the country (then withdrawn from the Home Office where l)efore it had been conducted), and to exist thenceforth as the ' Department of War and < Colonies ' for more than half-a-century — that