But he was not, we must admit, the principal in this offence against the rights of an independent and friendly State.  He has not the blame to bear, or, if you will, he has not the praise to receive, of having decided upon this intervention between the King and his insurgent subjects.  The French Admiral was the contriver of the scheme.  Admiral Baudin formed his own determination, doubtless in order to gratify the mob of Paris, as well as the rebels of Palermo; and our commander, afraid of being outstripped in his favourite course, at once yielded to the Frenchman’s request, the one looking to the Boulevards of Paris for approval, the other to the Foreign Office of London.  Orders were issued to all our fleet, that they should use every means to prevent the Neapolitans from following up their victory at Messina; and sealed instructions were sent to direct their proceedings should these peaceable efforts fail.  Why not make the instructions public?  Why not give notice openly of our intentions?  It might have prevented the necessity of using force.  However, the orders were sealed, and they directed that first the guns should be fired without shot; next, that they should be shotted, but not fired so as to injure the crews of our ally’s ships; and, finally, that they should be used as hostilely and destructively as was necessary to accomplish the purpose of forcing Naples to let the Sicilian rebels alone.  But then it is said, and it is the pitiful pretext of equal treatment to both parties, that the orders were alike to prevent action of the King’s troops and the revolters.  Was ever there a more wretched shift, a more hollow pretence, than this?  Keep the Sicilians from breaking an armistice enforced to save them from utter and final destruction!  Keep the beaten Sicilian rebel from overpowering his victorious masters!  Keep the felon convicted from rushing to the gallows in spite of the respite granted him!  Can human wit imagine a more ridiculous pretext than this, of affecting to hold the balance even, when you are preventing the conqueror from improving his victory, and only preventing the vanquished from attempting what without a miracle he cannot do, cannot, even with all your assistance, venture to try?  But such was our just conduct in an interference which we had not the shadow of a right to take upon ourselves.  We showed our friendly feelings towards an ancient ally by forcibly screening his revolted subjects, and compelling him to delay for nearly seven months the total defeat of those rebels and the complete restoration of tranquillity.  From the 10th of September, when Messina fell, to the 30th of March, when we were kindly pleased to let the armistice expire, the English fleet persevered in reducing the King to inaction, and saving his rebellious subjects from the operation of his armies.  But for our own fleet, there is not a doubt that Catania and Palermo must have fallen in a fortnight, but we nursed, and fostered, and prolonged