Mr. Kinglake has detailed, and has preserved in his fifth edition, a
story regarding the dinner of the Cabinet at Pembroke Lodge, which,
although accurate in the immediate purport of his relation, would give
a very false impression of the real deliberations of the Cabinet. Some
days before that dinner, a Cabinet meeting was held in the day-time,
at which the whole question of sending an expedition to the Crimea
... was very carefully and very maturely discussed. Lord Palmerston
for some months had been bent on sending an expedition to the Crimea,
and I had only withheld my assent till the siege of Silistria should
have been proved to be a failure.... Some days afterwards I gave a
Cabinet dinner at Pembroke Lodge, and as the members of the Cabinet,
with the exception of the Chancellor, had been present at the previous
deliberation, they cared little for criticising after dinner the
exact form of the sentences in which the number of the troops and
the disposition of the fleet were minutely specified. It is no doubt
true that several members of the Cabinet went to sleep during this
discussion.