Lord John, now finding that he had made a mistake, succumbed on the 16th of December; and so the scandal was hushed up. The Queen, however, felt ill at ease, for, by this time, she knew that the Ministry had no stability, and that Lord John would soon again give his colleagues more serious trouble. But he remained in the Cabinet fully cognisant of everything that was done by the War Department, and never expressing the least disapproval of its management till Parliament met in January, 1855. Then, when Mr. Roebuck gave notice of his motion for inquiring into the conduct of the war, Lord John, without the slightest warning, resigned, saying that as he agreed with Mr. Roebuck he did not see how the motion could be resisted. The Duke of Newcastle again offered to retire in favour of Lord Palmerston, if haply Lord John Russell could be thereby induced to withdraw his resignation. But again, his colleagues refused to sacrifice him, and so they all offered to resign. This was a cruel blow to the Queen. She protested that there was no precedent for a Ministry resigning in the midst of a war till they were dismissed. She implored Lord Aberdeen not to desert her at a moment when the very worst possible effect would be produced by the spectacle of the nation struggling through war without a Government. The Cabinet accordingly determined to face Mr. Roebuck’s motion; but when he carried it against them, as has already been recorded, they were compelled to retire from office. Then the Queen had to meet one of the most perplexing and anxious Ministerial crises of her reign. Lord Derby was appealed to. But he found he could only obtain “independent support” from Lord Palmerston, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Aberdeen’s friends--which, he observed cynically, was “support which could never be depended on.” He did not seem to have much faith in his own colleagues, and he consequently declined to form a Ministry. But he sympathised with the Queen in her vexation at the turn which events had taken--quoting to her a remark of Walewski’s--“What influence can a country like England pretend to have without an army and without a Government?” Lord Lansdowne was next consulted. He was willing to form a Cabinet, but then he was old and broken in health. He could not possibly serve for more than a few months, and obviously his enforced retirement would again cast everything into confusion. Lord John Russell, of course, had long been under the hallucination that he could form an Administration without the aid of the Peelites. His cantankerous treachery to his colleagues, and his unscrupulous pertinacity in disintegrating the Coalition Cabinet in circumstances most damaging to the country, rendered him objectionable to the Queen. But still acting on Lansdowne’s advice, she determined to let him try, so that the mortification of failure might perchance dispel his delusion that he had still a name to conjure with as a Party leader.