Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/87

ENGLISH WAK ADMINISTRATION. 43 part of the task as they could) they handed on ^'^AP. the rest of the burthen to other departments _ by discharging a second liight of ' requisitions.' Thus the Horse Guards by their own power could furnish out horse and foot; whilst the Ordnance, too, witliout aid from other depart- ments, could contribute artillery, ammunition, and some kinds of stores ; but for means of sea-transport, both the Horse Guards and the Ordnance always necessarily appealed to the Admiralty : yet the Admiralty, if thus seem- ingly oppressed, could retort, so to speak, on the Ordnance, making giant demands for guns, stores, munitions of war. The Treasury (if no English provisions were wanted) would only have to instruct their own ofhcer (the Commis- sary-General) ; but, whenever it happened that the provisions required were of a kind that should be supplied from England, a further step was necessary, and in that case the Lords of the Treasury made a double appeal to the Admiralty, demanding from its Victualling sub- department the needed supplies — salt meat, perhaps, or biscuits, or rum, or tons upon tons of pressed hay — and demanding also from its Transport sub- department the means of ship- ping off those things to a port near the seat of war.(^^) Though ostensibly only requests from one department to another, and therefore from equal to equal, tliese demands still expressed so con- clusively the will of the aggregate Government that the recipients in general met them with a