Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/438

408 APPENDIX. secret ; but sleep is not deliberation, and there is no rule nor principle which precludes a Minister from describing any natural phenomenon which he may have observed at a Cabinet meeting. I own that, to me, the assenting disposition of those who remained awake (for they were anxious, careful, laborious men) is harder to account for than the condition of those who were in a complete state of rest ; and I incline to the solution which I have spoken of as likely to be ofTered by the analytical cliemist, because his theory (that of a narcotic substance having been taken by some nuschance) would account for a torpor which affected all more or less, though in different ways and in different degrees. That I am right in the view I take as to the inexorable stringency of the Despatch, is shown, I think, clearly enough by the effect which it instantly had upon the minds of the tAvo men who first saw it Avhen it reached the camp — namely. Lord Eaglan and Sir George Brown. Lord Eaglan's letter of the 19th of July (p. 277) shows clearly that he submitted to act with soldierly readiness under in- structions which he looked upon as imperative, or, at all events, violently cogent; and Sir George BroAvn gives his interpretation of the Despatch (p. 271) with a bluntness which precludes all doul)t about the light in which lie re- garded it. The Government, he considered, were resolved that, at all hazards, the expedition should proceed ; and if Lord liaglan should not consent to lead it, he thought they would instantly send out some one (dse who would. It may be said that this sleep of the Cabinet is one of those things which, however true they may be, it is better not to disclose. Certainly no one is obliged to go and state a thing thoughtlessly, or without a j)urpose, merely because it happened. But I have to account for a great transaction — the invasion of a Eussian province. I ascer- tain that this invasion was caused, and caused entirely, by