Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/59

 IN THE WAR AGAINST KUSSIA. 29 grounds arc withheld.* Wlmt we all may kuow chap. is that he found himself compelled to resign ;■{- ' '. that the Queen accei^itcd his resignation ; and that the Council-day on which he would have to de- liver up the seals of ofTice was duly fixed. But no sooner had all this been done, than a sense of Lord Palmerston's immense sterling worth as a Baron Stockinar ; for the Prince Consort's letter to liini on the suLject -was not a real and thorough disclosnro. Whether the curious outcry of those days against ' Prince Albert's interfer- 'ence'was in any way connected with the transactions above stated, I do not undertake to say ; but it followed them with a very close step. The outcry Avas one wrongly, nay, almost absurdly directed, and was utterly silenced upon the meeting of Parliament in 1854, by Lord Aberdeen and other public men, who spoke out with unshrinking clearness upon what had seemed until then a tender and delicate subject. In saying that the outcry was wrongly or absurdly directed, I am far from meaning to represent that it was baseless ; for I think, on the contrarj'', that transactions appearing to have resulted from the hostility of the Crown to Lord Palmerston in the five or six middle years of this century, were a very fit sub- ject for public inquiry, and in the meantime for that healthy, wise uneasiness which awakens the care of Parliament. "What Parliament ought to have asked, and ought to have taken care to learn, was — not whether the Prince Consort, or any other • Private Secretary,' or friend or courtier, had been giving counsel to the Queen, but — whether any of her constitutional advisers had been guilty of undue complacency to the Crown, or of intriguing against a colleague. If the life of the late Prince Consort in 1853 should be un- reservedly imparted to the public, the 'grounds' above referred to as wanting will not fail to appear. The December of 1853 was a critical month in the Prince Consort's political life. t A difference with his colleagues on the question of ' Kcfonn' was assigned by Lord Palmerston as a ground for his resigna- tion (see the explanations in Hansard at the opening of the
 * Tlicy were eve'i withlicUl, one iiioy sny, from tlio faitliful