Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/276

 2-lG OIIDERS AND TEErAl^ATIONS CIIAP. tributed his continuance in office to other than XIV . worthy and unselfish motives ; but for those who lay stress upon the principle that office and power ought not to be put asunder, it -was irksome to have to mark the difTerence between what the Prime Minister Avas believed to desire, and what he was now consenting to do. No good Parliament was sitting, and it might be im- Btaiid made, ,. iuPariia- alined that there was something to say ajramst inent against °. ,. o ^ o the invasion, the plan for invadiug a province of Eussia at a moment when all the main causes of the dispute were vanishing; but the same causes which I have spoken of as paralysing all resistance to the beginning of the war now hindered every attempt to withstand its renewal ; for the orators who were believed to be tainted with the doctrines of the Peace Party were still lying under the ban which they had brought upon themselves by their former excesses of language. So now again in June, as before at the opening of the session, the counsels of these eloquent men were lost to the world. They became as powerless as the Prime Minister ; and the cause which they represented was so utterly brought to ruin, that the popular demand for an invasion, which carried with it the virtual renewal of an otherwise expiring war, had the sound of that voice with which a nation speaks when the people are of one mind. So now, in presenting to his colleagues this his favourite scheme of an enterprise against Sebas- topol, the Duke of Newcastle, with the strong Palmerston at his shoulder, was upheld, nay,