Now, to show your Lordships the tendency there was in these negotiations to take advantage of every circumstance, accidental or otherwise, for the purpose of blackening the conduct of the Neapolitan Court, I will only state one particular, and that is with respect to the continuance of the bombardment.  A most indignant denial has been given to this charge by the general officers and others engaged; and it turned out that our consuls and vice-consuls, all animated by the same spirit, all in favour of rebellion and against the lawful sovereignty, all agreed in one fact as the ground of the charge,—­they all said that eight hours after the resistance had ceased the bombardment was continued.  It might naturally be supposed that, with this continued bombardment, much blood would be spilt; and when all our agents are dwelling on this continuance as a cruelty, every reader must conclude that needless carnage was perpetrated, and much blood shed.  But no such thing; not one drop could be spilt, and why?  Because every creature had left the town before the eight hours had commenced to run!  But the bombardment was continued for two reasons.  In the first place, every house, as in Paris, was a fort; and, secondly, the Neapolitan commander could not possibly trust the white flag immediately after he had lost a whole battalion by a false flag being hoisted to decoy them into ambush, where the ground was mined.  But no single fact of needless cruelty has been proved against the King of Naples, though I know, from a person attached to our Navy, and in those seas at that time, whose account I have read, as also from that of a traveller accidentally on board of one of the Queen’s ships at the time, that there were cruelties of the most disgusting and revolting description committed by the Sicilians, and not one word of reference to which can be found in all the curiously selected papers that load your table.  In the mass things are to be found, indeed, much against the wishes of the selectors, and also of their agents in Sicily and Naples.  This is owing to their clumsy design of telling what they think will exalt the rebel and damage the loyal party, without always perceiving that these statements cut more ways than one.  Thus, a number of consuls sign a statement that all the inhabitants had left Messina.  This is contrived to show that resistance had ceased; but it also proves that no cruelty could be committed by the bombardment.  Again, we are told that 1,500, by one zealous agent’s account, had been slain of the King’s troops:  but Lord Napier’s hotter zeal is not satisfied with this number, and he makes it 3,000.  The object of putting forward this statement is to exalt the rebel valour, and give a more formidable aspect to the revolt.  But the zeal in one direction forgets that the same parade of numbers also shows how necessary severe measures had become on the King’s part, and how little blame could attach to the gallant troops who, thus assailed, had imposed on them, by the duty of self-defence, the necessity of quelling so bloody an insurrection.