I have received your letter of the 26th of March, and am exceedingly surprised that the Governor of Messina should presume to interfere in the captures made by a British ship of war.  Captain Foley is justifiable in taking the French tartan, although she was going into the port, or even in the port.  You will, therefore, claim from him the materials of which the vessel has been plundered; and, at the same time, demand from him what he has done with the French prisoners of war taken in the vessel, as it is highly presumptuous in him to interfere with British prisoners of war.  As to demands made against the vessel, it is my desire that they are not paid, nor has he any right to make them; on the contrary, the captors have a right to demand, from him, satisfaction, for the employment of the vessel on the coast of Calabria.  I am, gentlemen, your very humble servant,

     Nelson.

The Vanguard this day arrived from Tripoli; and Captain Hardy brought, with other pacific promises, from the bashaw, the most positive assurances that no provisions should be sent to Malta by any of his subjects:  but, his lordship observed, interest is, we know, their main spring, and they are not to be greatly depended on.  The bashaw of Tripoli had, in fact, made a treaty with Bonaparte on the 24th of February, when he received a present of a diamond; the pernicious effects of which, to Great Britain and her allies, his lordship was thus determined totally to counteract.

On the 5th of April, in a letter to his Excellency Sir Charles Whitworth, the British minister at Petersburgh, Lord Nelson thus writes respecting Malta—­We certainly have, at an expence of fifteen thousand pounds a month, so closely blockaded the port of La Valette, that the appearance of the Russian troops on the island must insure it’s fall in a week, if famine does not force it’s surrender before their arrival.  The garrison are mutinous, and in dreadful want of provisions.  The scurvy cannot be checked.  His lordship then observes, that his anxiety to get possession of Le Guillaume Tell, and two frigates, which escaped after the battle of the Nile, will not be doubted; and that these ships, but for our close blockade, would probably have long ago been in France:  all which, he begs, may be submitted to his Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Russia.  He has, he adds, given directions to Captain Ball to co-operate in the most cordial manner with the Russian troops; who so ably conducted himself, not only as a sea-officer, but as conciliating the affections of the Maltese, that he was, unanimously, by the islanders, and with the approbation of his Sicilian Majesty, elected their general and chief.  His lordship trusts that, should the order be restored, Captain Ball would be a knight of it; “for a more gallant, able officer, does not grace this world.  I feel,” continues he, “I have said a great deal; but, with my honour, I pledge myself for the truth of it.”