On 22 October 1830 Nash was suspended from the office of Architect to the Board of Works. As Prime Minister the ‘Iron Duke’, the Duke of Wellington, had been stringent enough; now Nash could expect even less generosity from the Whigs who won the elections in November. In fact the waste and extravagance of the ‘Palace in Pimlico’ was exactly the kind of corruption they had been elected to root out. Lord Grey, the new Whig Prime Minister, appointed a Select Committee to investigate the Palace affair. It was particularly concerned about the structural safety. It must have galled Nash to hear of his old colleagues, Smirke and Soane, being appointed to judge the safety of his building. They found this difficult: without ripping up the floors it was not possible to judge, because of what they called ‘the extensive and peculiar use of iron’. Nash had been one of the pioneers of cast-iron construction and was so confident of its strength that he suggested that they should bring in the Army to march on every floor.
