Linzee’s mission was to try and detach the Bey from the French interest, and it was hoped he could be induced to allow the seizure of a number of French vessels which had entered the port, under the convoy of a ship-of-the-line and four frigates.  When the British entered, the frigates had disappeared, being in fact the same that Nelson had fought ten days before.  In accordance with his instructions, Linzee strove to persuade the Bey that the Republican government, because of its revolutionary and bloodthirsty character, should receive no recognition or support from more regular states, not even the protection usually extended by a neutral port, and that in consequence he should be permitted to seize for Great Britain the vessels in Tunis.  The Turk may possibly have overlooked the fallacy in this argument, which assumed that the protection extended by neutral governments was rather for the benefit of the belligerent than for the quiet and safety of its own waters; but he was perfectly clear-sighted as to his personal advantage in the situation, for the French owners, in despair of getting to France, were selling their cargoes to him at one third their value.  To the argument that the French had beheaded their king, he drily replied that the English had once done the same; and he decisively refused to allow the ships to be molested.  Nelson was disgusted that his consent should have been awaited.  “The English seldom get much by negotiation except the being laughed at, which we have been; and I don’t like it.  Had we taken, which in my opinion we ought to have done, the men-of-war and convoy, worth at least L300,000, how much better we could have negotiated:—­given the Bey L50,000, he would have been glad to have put up with the insult offered to his dignity;” and he plainly intimates his dissatisfaction with Linzee.  This irresponsible and irreflective outburst was, however, only an instance of the impatience his enterprising, energetic spirit always felt when debarred from prompt action, whether by good or bad reasons; for almost on the same day he expresses the sounder judgment:  “Had we latterly attempted to take them I am sure the Bey would have declared against us, and done our trade some damage.”  No advantage could have accrued from the seizure of the French vessels, at all proportioned to the inconvenience of having the hostility of Tunis, flanking as it did the trade routes to the Levant.  The British had then quite enough on their hands, without detaching an additional force from the north coast of the Mediterranean, to support a gratuitous quarrel on the south.  As a matter of mere policy it would have been ill-judged.