ABSTRACT
Some time in the summer of 1846, two gentlemen met on the deck of a river steam-boat, which was plying its usual course from the Nine Elms Pier to Hungerford Market. One was the late Lord Ashburton, better known to the monied and political world as Mr. Alexander Baring; the other was the Rev. G. R. Gleig, now Chaplain-General of Her Majesty’s Forces, and Inspector-General of Military Schools. There had occurred not long previously some modifications in Sir Robert Peel’s government, by which the present Lord Ashburton, then Mr. B. Baring, was transferred from the Board of Control to the Pay Office. The two passengers by the steam-boat touched many other topics of conversation upon this event, when Lord Ashburton remarked, that this son, though he could not refuse the advancement which had been pressed upon him, was little pleased with his change of office; because as Secretary to the Board of Control, he had been always engaged in important affairs of State, whereas at the Pay Office there was only routine business to attend to, and not very much of that, ‘Does Mr. Baring really desire to undertake a great and a difficult work?’ ‘Certainly,’ was the answer, ‘provided it be a useful one.’ A useful work, and a great one too, even if it do not prove, as we anticipate that it will, the forerunner of another greater than itself, was immediately suggested.
