Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/517

APPENDIX. 473 Note 110. — Report, pp. xxvi. to xxx. In my condensation of this part of thu Report, I have fortunately been able to follow pretty closely the language of the Treasury. — Treasury Memor- andum, p. 4. The Board, after reporting its opinion, did not advise that anything should be 'done thereon,' Rep., p. xxx.; and apparently there was no apt recommendation on the subject of the Commissariat which the General Officers could well make, because they had been in that respect forestalled by the change of the previous year — a change which had alreadi/ withdrawn the direction of the Commissariat from the Treasury, and entrusted it to the War Department. The Board did not go into motives showing whi/ the Treasury omitted to comply fully and at once with Mr Filder's demands ; but I may here remind the reader that, by aid of the Treasury Memorandum of the 2d of February 1857, I was enabled to carry the enquiry a little higher, and show that the hesitation of the Treasury in complying with the demands for forage was caused by what proved to be a mistaken use of the judgment, but still by an anxious — a too anxious — care for the interests of the public service. — See ante, p. 110 et seq. Note 111. — Upon finding that the blame had been judicially laid on the Treasury, the two pirincipal functionaries of the Department — that is, the First Lord, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Lord Palmerston, and Sir George Lewis, called upon Sir Charles Trevelyan, as one who was ' cognisant ' of the matter in question, to furnish the additional explanations which appeared, as they said, to be demanded by the finding of the Chelsea tribunal ; and Sir Charles did not fail to supply the statement required, doing this with great elaboration, and, as may well be supposed, with much ability. This statement of his, dated the 2d of February 1857, occupied 75 folio pages of print, and was laid before Parliament ; but no further step in the matter was taken by either the Treasury or any other De- partment, and, accordingly, the word ' acquiesced ' is rightly used in the text. The acts of the Treasury functionaries men- tioned in this note were only acts ' inter se. ' After the judgment pronounced by the Chelsea Board, there was so little desire to aggravate the discomfiture it inflicted on Sir John M'Neil and Colonel Tulloch, or to mtercept the reward of their labours, that a motion in the Commons for an address to the Crown praying the Queen to confer some mark of distinction upon the two Commissioners in recognition of their services was allowed to pass unanimously. Sir John M'Neil was accordingly made a Privy Councillor, and Colonel Tulloch a Knight of the Bath.