ENGLISH WAR ADMINISTRATION. 49 their power by tending each regiment separately, chap. they had not the kind of means needed for ^ ' ministering to an army assembled in the field, wanting even, as it were, to begin with, what a factory man calls his ' plant ' — the basis of a power required for putting other power in mo- tion — the machinery for making machines. Still, the Westminster Departments between The one them had been rendering the State one good ou?1)ffices"^* service. Amidst all the havoc resulting from ^^^ ^'^' ' political exigencies they had still kept alive the prime element of Wellington's Peninsular array ; for, although not allowed to preserve so much as even the framework of his administrative organi- sation, and left wanting in all the machinery for supplying and moving and tending troops sent out to undertake a campaign, they yet had up- held in full vigour our famous, time-honoured by always
- regiments ' with the glory of the great days "the re!|i-°*
yet clinging to their names, their traditions, their colours ; and accordingly, these clusters of offices, however quaint, rude, and ill suited for maintaining strong armies in the field, gave a curiously faithful expression to the mind of our strange, wayward people — a people not choosing in peace-time to stand prepared for war, yet determined uevertlieless to be always prepared for a fifflit. VOL. vn.
