The instability of a viscous fluid between two infinite vertical plates and heated from below in the presence of a magnetic field perpendicular to the plates is investigated, and the most critical stability boundary in the space of the Rayleigh number R, Hartmann number M, and the horizontal wave number a is determined. It is found that the most unstable mode is a symmetric mode with zero wave-number, and that for any M the fluid is unstable for any non-zero R, however small.