Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/441

 APPENDIX. 411 curious or interesting to the collector of small trifling anecdotes, was not an event really fraught with any his- toric consequences. That conclusion, as is seen hy the text, I have not myself reached ; for it seemed, and still seems to me, that what really obtained Lord Raglan's assent to the behest of the Government was — not the bare intimation of its desire (which the private letter alone would no doubt have sufficed to convey), but — the pressure applied by those sentences — those stringent, elaborate sen- tences which abounded in the Official Despatch. In other words, I have judged that the almost irresistible cogency of the instructions sent out to Lord Eaglan was not im- parted to them by the mere decision of the Cabinet of the 27th, but by the wording or, as Frenchmen would say, the ' redaction ' of the Despatch of the 29th ; and the conclu- sion of course is obvious, because the expediency of adopt- ing that same cogent wording or ' redaction ' was the very question which lulled the Ministers assembled at Poni- bruke Lodge. After all, as I have now come to learn, the phenomenon of a sleeping Cabinet is not one so entirely unheard of as many perhaps might suppose. The truth is, that at an anxious time, and when Parliament is sitting, our ^Minis- ters often tax their strength to the very verge of what is possible ; and, when they strive to do yet more, nature puts her gentle veto on their attempted excesses, and makes them sleep the sleep of the weary instead of pressing on with their toils. There have been brought to my know- ledge several instances of Cabinets endeavouring to de- liberate in the later hours of the evening, and succunibing, as on the 28th of June 1854, to the narcotic eifect of a voice reading out a lengthy document. — Note to 6lh Edition.