After these preliminary compliments, Nelson presents his grievances.  He has given the passports of a British admiral to Sicilian vessels bona fide employed in carrying grain to the besiegers of the French, and to such only; and he must insist upon those passports being respected, as the vessels bearing them are serving the great common cause.  He demands, also, that aid be not given to the common enemy.  “I was rejoiced,” he writes the Bashaw of Tripoli, “to find that you had renounced the treaty you had so imprudently entered into with some emissaries of General Bonaparte—­that man of blood, that despoiler of the weak, that enemy of all true Musselmen; for, like Satan, he only flatters that he may the more easily destroy; and it is true, that since the year 1789, all Frenchmen are exactly of the same disposition.”  His Highness, however, has relapsed into his former errors.  “It is now my duty to speak out, and not to be misunderstood.  That Nelson who has hitherto kept your powerful enemies from destroying you, can, and will, let them loose upon you, unless the following terms are, in two hours, complied with....  If these proper terms are not complied with, I can no longer prevent the Portuguese ships from acting with vigour against your Highness.  Your Highness will, without difficulty, write me a letter, the substance of which will be dictated by the British consul.”

The vehemence with which the French are here denounced, though pitched in a key deemed harmonious to the ears for which it was immediately intended, was entirely consonant to the feelings which had lately taken possession of Nelson.  They were the result, probably, in part, of the anxious rancor bred by the uncertainties and worry of the pursuit of Bonaparte; in part, also, of more direct contact than before with the unbridled license which the French Government and its generals, impelled by dire necessity and by an unquestionable lack of principle, had given to the system of making war support war.  The feebleness and corruption of the Directory had relaxed the reins of discipline from top to bottom, and a practice which finds its justification only when executed with the strictest method and accountability, had degenerated into little better than disorganized pillage. “‘Down, down with the French!’ is my constant prayer.” “‘Down, down with the French!’ ought to be placed in the council-room of every country in the world.”  “To serve my King, and to destroy the French, I consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring; and if one of these little ones militate against it, I go back to obey the great order and object, to down, down with the damned French villains.  Excuse my warmth; but my blood boils at the name of a Frenchman.  I hate them all—­Royalists and Republicans.”  Infidels, robbers, and murderers are the characteristic terms.  This detestation of the legitimate enemy spread, intensified, to those who supported them in