argument in a way which must be pronounced inimitable, and during forty years he uniformly exerted it for noble and useful ends. He weeded out a mass of noxious errors, and he placed a number of valuable truths and principles in new and striking points of view, thereby adding incalculably to their exchangeable value and beneficial influence. The good he has done in this way cannot be measured by what passes current, or is ticketed, as his; for so fertile was his mind that thoughts and images fell from him and were picked up and appropriated by others, like the carelessly set jewels which dropped from Buckingham's dress at the Court of Anne of Austria. He never came into society without naturally and easily taking the lead as, beyond all question, the most agreeable, sensible, and instructive guest and companion that the oldest person living could remember. These are his titles to the celebrity which still attaches to his name, but unluckily they sound transitory, perishable, and inappreciable when contrasted with the claims of the first-class humourists to the undisturbed enjoyment of their immortality. Each of these has produced at least one standard work, which will rank as an English classic so long as the English language endures. Sydney Smith is similarly situated in this respect to what Swift would be if he had never written The Tale of a Tub' or Gulliver's Travels.' Nay, an impartial posterity will probably prefer the Drapier's Letters to Peter Plymley's. But if the Canon of St. Paul's was inferior to the Dean of St. Patrick's as a wit or a writer, he was superior as a moralist and a man. The prime of his life was not wasted in the barren and abortive struggles of faction. His temper was not soured by disappointment, nor his heart corroded by misanthropy. He was not like the scathed elm which had begun to wither at the top. His intellect retained to the last its original brightness; and he died in the fulness of years, with glowing affections and unimpaired faculties, surrounded by all that should accompany old age, and able to say with Addison to any sorrowing relative who may have needed the lesson, I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian ' can die.'

We may apply to him, with the alteration of a word or two, what he said in his letter to Sir James Mackintosh's son: The impression which the great talents and amiable qualities of your father made upon me will remain as long as I remain. When I turn from living spectacles of stupidity, ignorance, and malice, and wish to think better of the world, I remember my great and benevolent friend, Mackintosh.' How often, in an analogous mood of mind, have we not thus thought of him!

VOL. CH. NO. CCVII.

T

How ardently, when we see folly or bigotry reviving and putting forth fresh offshoots, do we long for one of his racy pamphlets or pithy letters! Oh, for one hour of Peter Plymley! What a subject for his pen would be the intolerance and asceticism of the Sabbatarian party, or this new-fangled distaste for representative government, or the Administrative Reform mania not the less dangerous because it has, or had, a semblance of reason on its side. When we turn from such spectacles-from the contemplation of false piety, simulated zeal, mendacious presumption, and hollow patriotism-and wish to think better of the world, we remember our great, wise, and benevolent friend, Sydney Smith.

ART. X.-1. Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Army before Sebastopol, with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. - Printed 18th June, 1855.

2. Papers relating to the Negotiations at Vienna on the Eastern Question. Parts XIII. and XIV. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, May 1855.

TH

HERE has seldom been a change of public feeling more rapid and violent than that which overthrew the Government of Lord Aberdeen in February last, and for a time threatened to render any Government impossible. It arose naturally enough, not merely from the reaction which is sure to follow over-confident expectations of success; but from the sympathy and astonishment with which the nation regarded the sufferings of the army. That suffering was declared by a distinguished member of the cabinet, at the moment he quitted it, to be as inexplicable to him as it appeared to others. Parliament did not directly charge those sufferings against the Government; but it took upon itself the duty of inquiry; and by the rules of construction usually acted upon under our parliamentary system, the Administration interpreted that course as implying want of confidence in their own intention to inquire, or their ability to remedy. Nevertheless, the new Government was formed mainly of the same elements; and did little more than continue the remedial measures which had already been begun. Those measures have proved to a great extent effectual, as they would have done if no Committee had been appointed, and if no change of administration had taken place. The inquiry of Parliament, as the Committee very fairly admits, has necessarily been partial and incomplete; not only

because the chief witnesses who ought to be heard have been engaged in working, whilst those actually examined could only talk; but also because that inquiry specially excluded many elements which went far to determine the conduct both of the Government and of the Generals. Yet it has cleared up some important facts, and, above all, it has served to allay the irritation and satisfy the curiosity of the public. We cannot in this article enter in detail upon the copious evidence taken by the Committee, nor can we, on the other hand, restrict ourselves within the limits to which this Report is necessarily confined; but we think we can supply our readers with such a sketch in outline of the conduct of the war and of the negotiations as may aid their judgment, and direct their inquiries to a just conclusion.

The conduct of the war' obviously divides itself into three very distinct heads; viz. the political conduct, that is to say, the conduct of it in so far as it has been affected by political considerations; its strategical conduct, that is to say, the general plan of its active operations; and lastly, the executive conduct, or the departmental management of details. We must observe, however, that although these are separable on paper, they are so closely connected in practice that no just opinion can be arrived at which is not founded on a due consideration of them all. The Report of the Committee deals almost exclusively with the last; and consequently, in so far as shortcomings in execution depended on essential difficulties of plan, and this again on paramount considerations of policy, it cannot afford a just view of the whole conduct of the war.'

But little falls within political conduct of the war which does not rather belong to the negotiations, and with these we propose to deal separately before the close of this article. But there are some important features in the war which have been determined by considerations neither purely diplomatic nor merely strategical, such, for example, as the use on all occasions of a combined force of the two allied Powers. Lord Ellenborough has remarked on this combination as involving the radical vice of a divided command. This is undoubtedly true: but it is the vice of our position, and could not be avoided without incurring other evils, and especially political dangers of the most serious kind. It was indispensable to show that perfect community of design of which combined action is an essential part; and if none but French troops had been sent to the East-setting aside the physical insufficiency of the one army without the other jealousies and suspicions would have arisen from the exclusive occupation of Turkish territory by a single Power,

which might have had serious results in Europe, and even on the conditions of our own alliance. But it is needless to pursue this subject further, because we have seen that all the troops which both France and England could accumulate on the great point of attack have not been too strong, by a single man, for the tremendous undertaking they were expected to perform: and we may safely add that each army has felt its need of the peculiar virtues of the other for sustaining all the hardships and difficulties of the struggle.

6

We pass on, therefore, without delay to the second head or the strategical conduct of the war. Although, at the time when the public and Parliament were willing to listen to and believe. anything against what was called the conduct of the war, many attacks were made from every possible direction on the general. plan of operations, only one counter-project has been propounded which can even be termed rational. We refer to the project of those who maintain that when the more immediate defence of Constantinople or that of the Turkish Cis-Danubian provinces had been provided for, we ought to have proceeded no further, and to have abstained from enlarging the circle of the war by aggressive operations against the enemy. Lord Ellenborough, who last year declared that this was a 'statesman's war,' and consequently one which the people of this country could not understand,' has propounded this view in the House of Lords. He says, it is a most dan'gerous thing to attack a great nation's military honour,' and that on this ground we ought to have been content with the Russian failure at Silistria, and the subsequent evacuation of the Principalities. We shall not seek to reconcile this opinion with a former speech, in which he recommended a war of nationalities, and an extensive system of attack on the Russian possessions in Asia, or with the more formal announcement, in a subsequent oration, that we ought to have assailed Russia at once nearer home, and sent our army to operate in the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland. But we have no hesitation in saying that of all these various and contradictory schemes the 'donothing' policy is the least irrational. Logically, perhaps, and on paper, though not morally or in practice, it would have been possible for the allied armies to have been contented with the repulse of the Russian invasion, which was effected by the gallantry of the Turks, encouraged by their own presence in the background. Between 70,000 and 80,000 troops of the finest armies in the world might in this sense, have re-embarked for France and England without ever having seen the enemy, or having done more than cheer the heroic exertions of a Turkish

garrison at the safe distance of more than 100 miles. But if they had done so, what terms of peace would have been obtained? Not even the evacuation of the Principalities as a confession of wrong, or on any ground of principle; but avowedly as a retreat merely for strategic reasons. Beyond this-nothing. If such a campaign would have satisfied Lord Ellenborough's notions of a statesman's war, would such terms have satisfied his conception of a statesman's peace?

If we may refer our readers to our own remarks on the war, published in this place in January last*, and written at a time when the magnitude of the siege of Sebastopol and the sufferings of the army were only partially known to us, we may assert that the strategical opinions expressed by us on that occasion are wholly untouched and unchanged by subsequent experience, or by the elaborate investigations of Mr. Roebuck's Committee. We shall not revert in detail to the explanation we then gave of the earlier movements of the campaign, the occupation of the lines of Gallipoli, the advance to Varna, and the decisive arguments against a campaign on the plains of the Danube or the Pruth.

When the siege of Silistria was raised, and the Russian army had retired behind the Danube, one main purpose of the advance to Varna was fulfilled; and everything clearly pointed to more enterprising operations on the shores of the Euxine. The formidable fleet which lay ensconced behind the forts of Sebastopol, was ever ready to slip its cables whenever an opportunity should present itself. To blockade that harbour required constant vigilance, and absorbed the exclusive attention of a powerful force. Its peculiar position rendered it, at almost all seasons, singularly convenient for watching and seizing opportunities of sudden attack, and of as sudden retreat. It was, undoubtedly, the head-quarters of Russian power in the Black Sea. There could be no doubt of the greatness of the object which would be attained by the destruction of that fleet and stronghold, both in a moral and in a material point of view. And the Crimea was the only, as it was by far the most important, theatre of action in which the allied armies could use, to full advantage, their maritime supremacy for the support of all their operations on shore.

One question alone was doubtful, and that was, the adequacy of the force at the disposal of the generals. We shall refer more particularly to this question when we come to the next head, on the executive conduct of the war. But, so far as

*Ed. Review, No. ccv. p. 270.