to have occurred to them—­that even the fate of a Ministry will not justify a lie.  We all admire in fiction the stern uprightness of Jeanie Deans:  “One word would have saved me, and she would not speak it.” ...  Whether that word would have saved them is a question—­it was their only chance—­and he would not speak it; that word revolted his conscience, it would have been false.  I know nothing grander than the sublime simplicity of that refusal.

[45] Lord John’s stepbrother.

Nearly two years later, Lord John Russell, in a letter to his brother, the
Duke of Bedford, said: 

...  The question with me was how to resist Roebuck’s motion.  I do not think I was wrong in substance, but in form I was.  I ought to have gone to the Cabinet and have explained that I could not vote against inquiry, and only have resigned if I had not carried the Cabinet with me.  I could not have taken Palmerston’s line of making a feeble defence.

How absurd it is to suppose that cowardice could have dictated Lord John’s decision at this time, his behaviour in circumstances to be recounted in the next chapter shows.  Unpopular as his resignation made him with politicians, it was nothing to the storm of abuse which he was forced to endure when he chose, a few months later, to stand—­now an imputed trimmer—­for the sake of preserving what was best in a policy he had not originally approved.

The troubles and differences of the Coalition Ministry did not lessen Lord John’s regard for Lord Aberdeen, of whom he wrote in his last years:  “I believe no man has entered public life in my time more pure in his personal views, and more free from grasping ambition or selfish consideration.”

Mr. Rollo Russell, on the publication of Mr. John Morley’s “Life of Gladstone,” wrote the following letter to the Times in vindication of his father’s action with regard to Mr. Roebuck’s motion: 

    DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, SURREY, November, 1903

SIR,—­In his admirable biography of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Morley has given, no doubt without any intention of injury, an impression which is not historically correct by his account of my father’s resignation in January, 1855, on the notice of Mr. Roebuck’s motion for a Committee of Inquiry.  I do not wish to apply to his account the same measure which he applies by quoting an ephemeral observation of Mr. Greville to my father’s speech, but I do maintain that “the general effect is very untrue.”

Before being judged a man is entitled to the consideration both of his character and of the evidence on his side.  In the chapter to which I allude there is no reference to the records by which my father’s action has been largely justified.  There is no mention, I think, of these facts:  that my father had again and again during the Crimean War urged upon the Cabinet a redistribution of offices, the more efficient