Colonel Macdonell was under the impression that he was unwittingly and remotely the cause of the break up of the Ministry of "all the talents." As this is an obscure point in history, it may be worth while to give the following facts. The impression produced by Marengo and Austerlitz had led to the Army Reform Bill of 1806, in which the points discussed were almost identical with those which lately excited the public mind. The disasters which accompanied our descent on Egypt in 1807, and the consequent evacuation of Alexandria, created considerable discontent and re-opened the question, and as further reforms on minor points were contemplated, suggestions from officers in the army were invited. Colonel Macdonell (then only lieutenant), wrote to Mr Windham, the Secretary at War, to point out that any broken attorney might create considerable embarrassment at any critical moment, seeing that, as the law then stood (an Act of George I. had extended the obligation of taking the sacrament to privates), any soldier could obtain, if not his own, his comrade's discharge by pointing him out as a Papist. The danger was recognised, and Mr Windham brought in a bill directed to meet the case, but its introduction revived the larger question of the repeal of the Tests' Acts and of the Catholic claims; and the discussion eventuated in Lord Howick's bill, which was met by the King's refusal, and the consequent resignation of the Ministry. This may explain the statement (mentioned in the obituary notice in the Times of the Marquis of Lansdowne), that he (Lord Lansdowne) could never understand how the Ministry came to be dissolved. "He had heard instances of men running their heads against a wall, but never of men building up a wall against which to run their heads."[3] [3] Sir H. Lytton Bulwer, in his "Life of Lord Palmerston," says, i. p. 62, "There has seldom happened in this country so sudden and unexpected a change of Ministers as that which took place in March 1807." It has been mentioned that Colonel Macdonell entered the army when quite a boy; and there were few men, I fancy, living, when he died last year, who could boast, as he could, of having served in the Duke of York's campaign in the last century, but I am not able to state in what regiment. He was for some time previously in Lord Darlington's regiment of Fencibles. He was at one period in the 8th, and at another in the 50th regiment, in which latter, I think, he went out to the West Indies and Canada. It was in Canada, however, that his principal services were rendered, which indeed were considerable, and have never been adequately acknowledged. When the Americans invaded Canada upon the declaration of war in 1812, it is hardly necessary to remind the reader that almost all our available troops were engaged in the Peninsula, and that Canada was pretty well left to its own resources.