30 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, laborious chief, did not merely use wisely and L_ well all the power he had by strict right, but, whenever occasion required, stepped freely be- yond his marked bounds. He was never, it seems, overruled when nominating for medical offices and commissions, Imt in other respects he had little or no autonomy, and lived always in acknowledged subjection to at least five depart- ments of State ; (^^) whilst, on the other hand, his power to command unquestioning obedience from administrators of inferior grade could hardly be said to extend beyond the six desks of his clerks ; for the very purveyors imagined that, as against a man called indeed a ' Director- ' General,' yet subordinated to many masters, and meagrely provided with salary, they might set up an independent authority ; {^^) and although he might be wanting supplies kept in store by another department, he could not go thither straight in order to lodge his requisition, but had to set it travelling circuitously, and begin by a prayer to the Horse Guards. The truth is that our economic reformers when discomfited in their earlier enterprises, had so absolutely inverted the cry of ' Peace to the ' cottage and war to the throne ' that, having failed to bring down the strong, they went and attacked the weak. They left standing the emptiest pomps and vanities of their country, and applied their nipping parsimony to strictly useful institutions, including that medical ser- vice upon which, in the times then to come, the health and the lives of our sick and wounded
