and recorded sentiments of Noble Lords opposite afford, that by bringing about the change of administration which these Resolutions are intended to promote, I should be doing a benefit to the public service.  My Lords, I cannot but think that at a time when it is most important that the Government of this country should have weight and influence abroad, frequent changes of administration are prima facie most objectionable.  I happened to be upon the Continent when the last change of Government in this country took place; and I must say it appeared to me, that a most painful impression was created in foreign states with respect to the instability of the administrative system of this country by these frequent changes of administration.  I do think, indeed, that not the least of the many calamities which this war has brought upon us is the fact, that it has had a tendency in many quarters to throw discredit on that constitutional system of Government of which this country has hitherto been the type and the bright example among the nations.

After all, what is chiefly valuable to nations as well as to individuals, and the loss of which alone is irreparable, is character; and it appears to me that, viewed in this light, many of the other calamities which we have had to deplore during the course of this war have been already accompanied by a very large and ample measure of compensation.  To take, for instance, the military departments:  notwithstanding the complaints we have heard of deficiencies in our military organisation, I believe we can with confidence affirm, that the character of the British soldier, both for moral qualities and for powers of physical endurance, has been raised by the instrumentality of this war to an elevation which it had never before attained.  In spite of the somewhat unfavourable tone which, I regret to say, has been adopted of late by a portion of the press of America, I have myself seen in influential journals in that country commentaries upon the conduct of our soldiers at Alma, at Balaklava, and at Inkerman, which no true-hearted Englishman could read without emotion:  and I have heard a tribute not less generous and not less unqualified borne to the qualities of our troops by eminent persons belonging to that great military nation with which we are now so happily allied.  To look to another quarter—­to contemplate another class of virtues not less essential than those to which I have referred to the happiness and glory of nations—­I have heard from enthusiastic, even bigoted, votaries of that branch of the Christian Church which sometimes prides itself as having alone retained in its system room for the exercise of the heroic virtues of Christianity,—­I say I have frequently heard from them the frank admission, that the hospitals of Scutari have proved that the fairest and choicest flowers of Christian charity and devotion may come to perfection even in what they are pleased to call the arid soil