Behind the question whether the civil side of the Crimean campaign had been mismanaged lay the wider issue whether the Executive should allow its duties to be delegated to a committee of the House of Commons.  “The question which had to be answered,” says Mr. Bright in his “History of England,” “was whether a great war could be carried to a successful conclusion under the blaze of publicity, when every action was exposed not only to the criticism and discussion of the Press, but also to the more formidable and dangerous demands of party warfare within the walls of Parliament.”

After both Lord John and Lord Derby had failed to form a Government, the Queen sent for Lord Palmerston.

Lady John, when her husband was summoned to form a Government, wrote to him from Pembroke Lodge on February 3, 1855: 

All the world must feel that the burden laid upon you, though a very glorious, is a very heavy one....  Politics have never yet been what they ought to be; men who would do nothing mean themselves do not punish meanness in others when it can serve their party or their country, and excuse their connivance on that ground.  That ground itself gives way when fairly tried.  You are made for better days than these.  I know how much better you really are than me....  You have it in your power to purify and to reform much that is morally wrong—­much that you would not tolerate in your own household....  “Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are honest,” on these things take your stand—­hold them fast, let them be your pride—­let your Ministry, as far as in you lies, be made of such men, that the more closely its deeds are looked into, the more it will be admired....  Pray for strength and wisdom from above, and God bless and prosper you, dearest.

But Lord John failing to find sufficient support, Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister.  His first Cabinet was a coalition.  It included, besides some new Whig Ministers, all the members of the previous Cabinet with the exception of Lord John, Lord Aberdeen, and the Duke of Newcastle.  But on Palmerston accepting the decision of the last Parliament in favour of a Committee of Inquiry, Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, and Sir James Graham resigned; their reason being that the admission of such a precedent for subordinating the Executive to a committee of the House was a grave danger to the Constitution.

It looked as though the Ministry would fall, when Lord John, who had previously refused office, to the surprise and delight of the Whigs, accepted the Colonies.  His motives in taking office will be found in the following letters.  He had already accepted a mission as British Plenipotentiary at the Conference of Vienna, summoned by Austria to conclude terms of peace between the Allies and Russia.  He did not therefore return at once to take his place in the Cabinet, but continued on his mission.  Its consequences were destined