There is always some fatal weakness about a great man that lures him into littleness, and this was an overwhelming tragedy in Nelson’s career.  The approbation of men was gratefully received and even asked for, but the adoration of women reduced him to helplessness.  He was drugged by it, and the stronger the doses, the more efficacious they were.  They nullified the vision of the unwholesome task he was set to carry out until his whole being revolted against the indignity of it, when he would pour out his wrath to Lady Hamilton as he did at the time when Troubridge would report to him his own trials.  No doubt this caused him to realize the chaotic condition of public affairs, for he writes to the lady that “politics are hateful to him, and that Ministers of Kings are the greatest scoundrels that ever lived.”  The King of Naples is, he suspects, to be superseded by a prince who has married a Russian Archduchess.  This, presumably, had been arranged by the “great political scoundrels.”  He stands loyally by Ferdinand, but soon all the work of that part of his life that gave him socially so much pleasure and professionally so much misery is to be left for evermore, and his great talents used in other and higher spheres.

He had retaken Naples from the French, who had set up the Parthenopean Republic in 1799, and placed the tyrant King on his throne again; after a few more chequered years a treaty of neutrality was signed between France and Naples, which was treacherously broken by Naples.  Ferdinand had to fly to Sicily, the French troops entered the capital, and Bonaparte, who had been marching from one victory to another, cleared out deep-rooted abuses and introduced reforms wherever he could.  He had become the terror and the enemy of the misgoverning monarchs of that period, and the French nation had proclaimed him Emperor in 1804.  He placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Naples in February 1806; Joseph ruled with marked moderation and distinction, sweeping away much of the foul canker of corruption and introducing many beneficent reforms during his two years of kingship.  He then, much against his own wishes, became King of Spain, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Prince Joachim Murat, the dashing cavalry officer, whose decorative exterior awed friend and foe, and helped to win many a battle.  His reign lasted from 1808 until 1815, and was no less distinguished than that of Joseph’s.  The fall of the Napoleonic regime was followed by the fall of Murat, and the despicable and treacherous Ferdinand became again the king, and brought back with him the same tyrannical habits that had made his previous rule so disastrous to the kingdom and to himself.  No whitewasher, however brilliant and ingenious, can ever wipe out the fatal action of the British Government in embarking on so ill-conceived a policy as that of supporting the existence of a bloodsucking government, composed of a miscreant ruling class headed by an ignoble king, all living on the misery and blood of a semi-civilized population.  It is a nauseous piece of history, with which, under sagacious administration, we should never have been connected.