John Russell's fault was committing himself to Buol as approving his plan before he knew how it would be viewed at home; but I see neither impossibility nor inconsistency in his having regarded it favourably at Vienna, and being biassed by all the arguments in its favour which there beset him on all sides, and when he returned to England and found the opinions of all his colleagues adverse to it, and heard their reasons for being so, that he should have been convinced by them, have subscribed to the general decision, and joined cordially with them in the vigorous prosecution of the war. Having come finally to this conclusion, his warlike speech was not unnatural, and he made it probably very much to prove to his own colleagues that he was in earnest with them. There was no necessity for his proclaiming what had passed at Vienna, as nothing had happened in consequence, and the question was not what impression had been made on his mind there in the course of the negotiations, but what was the opinion and what the resolution at which he finally arrived when all was over. But he has repeatedly in the course of his career contrived to do a vast deal of mischief by a very few words, and so it was in this instance. When he was driven to _confess_ that he had endorsed Buol's proposal, and said that he was still of the same opinion, his opponents were able with every appearance of truth to say that he had intended to conceal what he had done at Vienna, and to deceive the country, both as to his past conduct and his present opinions; and as it was obvious from his own avowal that he still was of the same opinion as at Vienna, his war speech was hypocritical and insincere, and he was unfit to be in a Cabinet pledged to carry on the war earnestly and vigorously. Against such an attack it was very difficult to make a good defence, and I doubt whether the most lucid and circumstantial statement and the most natural explanation of his own motives and sentiments at different periods of the transaction would have received a patient hearing and dispassionate consideration. The House of Commons and the public were in that frame of mind that will not listen, and cannot be fair and just, and he became, and could hardly avoid becoming, the victim of his own want of caution and prudent reserve and the excessive complication of the circumstances and details of the case. [Footnote 1: The proposal submitted to the Conference by Count Buol was that each of the Powers should have the right to maintain a limited naval power in the Black Sea. The whole discussion turned upon suppression of the naval supremacy of Russia in the Black Sea and the manner in which it was to be effected.] COMMAND OF THE ARMY.