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118 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, to exert their authority, the critic must in fair- " ness remind himself that the sub-department by sufferance had acquired a sort of inchoate autonomy, and that it was not the habit of the Treasury to keep Commissariat matters under the actual, personal supervision or cognisance of either the First Lord, or his colleague the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer.(^^) Thoinci- And again we ought to remember that the b^nl° Duke of Newcastle (then clothed with a power which would have virtually enabled him to put compulsion on the Treasury) omitted to take any steps for enforcing prompt compliance with Mr Filder's demands for pressed hay, and may there- fore be said to have erred in not using that paramount authority as War Minister which his colleagues had substantially conceded to him.(^^) Still, it would have been evidently harsh to hold the Duke supremely in fault, if his error was only that of not governing another department ostensibly coequal with his own ; and upon the whole, we perhaps may acknowledge that the dispersion of our war- waging offices ought, in justice, to involve, more or less, a corresponding dispersion of l)larae.