Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/160

116 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CUAP. for a reason — by philosophers called ' antecedent' ^ — which might well have been treated as worthy to supersede special conjectures, there could not but lie a grave danger in venturing to baffle the plans of a Commissariat officer who not only stood charged with the task of keeping an army supplied, but was labouring all the while in a region so remote from his chiefs in Whitehall that he could not exchange ideas with them in less than several weeks. Still, it is after the event that we come to such a conclusion ; and in justice to upright public servants, one ought to try to imagine how men would have judged, if the Allies had not happened to take the almost inconceivable course of abandoning the farm -produce of the whole Crimea to a defeated enemy. One ought to form some conception of the jeers that in that case would have been showered upon any Treas- ury potentate who had met the appeal of the Commissary-General by instant and liberal com- pliance — who, whilst having the ' Gazette ' of the 30th still damp on the table before him, had made haste to employ public treasure in sending out hay by long voyages to an army he then knew to be victorious — an army he then knew tO' be surrounded by pastures and meadow-lands, by farmsteads, and a well-disposed peasantry, by granaries and stacks of good forage. The want of the hay thus withheld became a misfortune when coupled with the loss of hay caused by the storm ; but of course that con- junction of evils was not one that any foresaw :