312 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, entrusted — entrusted without any safeguard, to eager, hurried editors ? (^^) But far from en- gaging their energies in any such task, members gave their whole care to the subject already engrossing the nation, and set themselves to repeat with the lips what they had lately been reading in print. Whether honestly enraged, as I myself have believed, or ' cringing ' under the press, as Mr Violence of Drummond declared, our House of Commons use/Zn^thr surpassed the journalists in violence and heat. Commons. There were even men fresh from the work of carrying on Government business who seemed to think all was chaos. Lord John Eussell used words which appeared to confess the incapacity of the Government to which he had belonged only a few days before ; and another eloquent member, then still holding office though not in the Cabinet, came down so perturbed, so de- spondent, that in addressing the House, he broke all the bonds of his own departmental red-tape, declaring our administrative system to be ' me- ' dieval ' and ' rotten.' Amongst people not quite in despair, and desiring to be what we call ' prac- ' tical,' the yearning after some better system expressed itself in the organised agitation that was all at once set on foot for the attainment of
- administrative reform ; ' and, as in the old times
of trouble and danger, the House heard once more of a motion to ' consider the state of the ' country.' But some orators preferred vouching simply that the nation was in an ' abyss ; ' and a member — a gifted member — stood up in his
