SLR JOHN McNEILL.*

THE controversy caused by the Report of the two Com- missioners sent to the Crimea to inquire into the mismanage- ment of the war is now almost forgotten. It was a heated and vivid disputation with just that flavour of "personalities" which the House of Commons relishes. Sir John McNeill washed his hands of the famous Chelsea Board of Inquiry, the appointment of which was the first effect of his and Colonel Tulloch's Report. He declined to appear before it, and this book makes public for the first time his side of the story. Colonel Tulloch (afterwards Sir Alexander Tulloch) behaved otherwise ; he called and cross-examined witnesses, and owing to his impetuosity and ardour made a mess of a good case. He then broke down in health, and left the Board with enough material for gaining dialectical victories over himself and Sir John McNeill. They had provoked the resentment of the Army, and suffered for it. This happened late in McNeill's life. The greater part of this memoir is taken up with his diplomatic services in Persia. These do not afford such interesting reading as the Crimean section, but his letters were very well worth collecting and publishing. They are valuable material of history, and both publisher and author deserve a grateful acknowledgment of their services in rescuing and preserving the kind of documents which are too often allowed to go astray, and are only in the minority of instances saved by the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

John McNeill was a member of the well-known family of McNeill of Colonsay, and a brother of Duncan McNeil, who afterwards became Lord Colonsay. He was trained as a surgeon, and was attached in that capacity to the East India Company's Legation in Persia. Such was his diplomatic ability and tact that he eventually became British Minister in Persia when the Legation had been transferred from the Company to the Foreign Office. Certainly much finesse was needed. Russia throughout McNeill's service in Persia was menacing that country, which England was pledged to protect. If Russia had not been kept skilfully in play she would probably have rid herself of such a troublesome burden as the Persian problem by simply giving a free hand to some military agent. When one remembers that Yermoloff, the Russian Commander-in- Chief in the Caucasus and the relentless enemy of Schamyl, was the typical military agent of those days and in those places, one understands that McNeill was a very good friend to Persia. Yet the Persians often sorely tried his • Memoir of the Bight Hon. Sir John McNeill, G.C.B., and of Si, Second Wife, Elisabeth Wilson. By their Granddaughter. With Portraits and Illustrations. London : John Murray. [15€. net.]

illimitable patience. If he exceeded by a hairbreadth the measure of gentleness which was necessary to conciliate them, they would make arrogant demands, and in his earlier days he was rather in the position of Lord Maeartney, the first Ambassador to China, who had to prove the dignity of Great Britain by refusing absolutely to toe the line of any humiliating Chinese formalism. McNeill's greatest achieve- ment in the Middle East was of course his famous success in forcing the Shah to abandon the siege of Herat. This, unfortunately, led to British intervention in Afghanistan and the First Afghan War.

We must say a word in passing about MeNeill's Chairman- ship of the Board of Supervision which watched the working of the Poor Law in Scotland. He held this office for over thirty years :— " One thing which the inquiry brought out most strongly was that the relief given throughout the Highlands and Islands had a very bad effect upon the character of the people. Formerly their pride led them to conceal poverty and value independence; now they were rapidly learning to parade and exaggerate their poverty, and to place no value upon independence. In Mull tho consumption of retailed whisky rose from 8,701 gallons in 1845 to 10,212 gallons in 1850; the sum spent upon ardent spirits alone in Mull in 1848 was £6,099 4s. In Skye also the consumption rose by 2,974 gallons, the sum of £7,454 being spent on whisky in 1850."

McNeill recognised that it was futile to try to tinker in- adequate economic conditions and keep all the Highlanders on the land who were then trying to find a living on it. His solution was emigration, and he recommended various ways of meeting the expense and combating the dislike of the people to pulling up their roots even from that shallow soil.

It was an irohy that McNeill should be held up to obloquy as an unfair critic of the Army in the Crimea. He had no tendency to form sensational opinions of ournational incapacity, and in writing the Report on the breakdown of the commis- sariat in the Crimea he expressly tried to restrain the censures of particular persons written by his colleague, Colonel Tulloch. Before he went to the Crimea he wrote :—

"Of public matters I shall only say that I am not at all disposed to take a gloomy view of them. All that has been said of Lord Raglan and the conduct of the war in the Crimea was said in nearly the same words of the Duke of Wellington and the war in the Peninsula—see Napier's History—and has been said of every war, great and small, in which we have been engaged in any part of the world since I can remember such matters. Look at Napier's account of what occurred on Sir John Moore's retreat during and after the retreat from Burgos. Nay, if you go back to the days of Marlborough, you will find the same thing said, in nearly the same terms. It is a part of the national character, and perhaps one of the elements of our success in war. It is our special and much valued privilege to grumble and to counterbalance the power we give our Ministers by grossly abusing them for the use they make of it."

The Government of the day used their two Commissioners as a means of relieving the strain of their own responsibility.

They gave them an almost impossible task and were not seriously interested in the inquiry except as a method of exculpation. The Commissioners, for their part, were in the terribly invidious position of investigating the actions of

Staff officers without having perfectly clear instructions or credentials for their work. The character of the Report was a temperate criticism—it scarcely reached censure—which incidentally named a few of the highest officers. It is the fashion nowadays to pretend that the sufferings of the Army

in the Crimea were due only to the lack of prevision in the Government at home. A Government who make war without having prepared for war are criminal as well as ridiculous, but the Commissioners, as we see, did not free the officers at the front from all blame. Let us take only one example of incompetence. Disease was spreading through the want of fresh meat. At Balaklava lay a great fleet of transports, and McNeill pointed out that across the Black Sea, on the southern shore, there was an almost limitless supply of fresh meat. No one had thought of tapping this supply ! McNeill wrote to Colonel Tulloch when their Report was being pre- pared :—

"I think you will now agree with me as to the origin of the whcle evil—viz., defective staff arrangements. Whoever heard in any army of a regiment going into the trenches for six nights in succession? Who was superintending all these arrangements ? A heavy burden ought to rest on their souls."

Readers of the Pannture Papers know how the Queen and Prince Albert mistakenly took alarm at the Report, holding

that the Army was being tried by Parliament and that its direct allegiance to the Crown was being obscured and impaired. Directly the resentment of the Army flamed forth Lord Palmerston began to blow hot and cold about the work of the two Commissioners, according as the defence of the Government required a change of tone, McNeil was cool and patient and dignified throughout. The only weak- ness we can discover in his position is that, although he thought that Staff systems rather than Staff officers should be publicly blamed, he put his name to the whole of a Report which contained passages he regretted. True, a divided -Report where there are only two Commissioners would be fatuous, yet specially inserted reservations by one or other of the authors are always possible, and rather emphasise the weight of conclusions in which the authors are absolutely agreed. The Chelsea Board really disproved little or nothing.

McNeill was right in saying :—

"My opinion still is, and now more than ever, that our true course is to be quiet, and not by restlessness to lead people to suppose that we have not entire reliance upon the real truth and justice of our case. So far as regards the Quartermaster-General's Department, the whole thing is in a nutshell. Were the articles there ? Were the troops in want of them ? Were they issued to the troops ? The returns give the answers, and it is impossible to escape from the inference.'

Years afterwards he wrote a preface to Sir Alexander Talloch's book, in which he spoke angrily of the levity with which the Chelsea Board had put all "the winter troubles," as Kinglake smoothly calls them, down to a shortage of bay.