he will be found complacently reckoning up the losses that we should have suffered if his counsels had been acted upon.  Sir Robert afterwards acquired a certain notoriety in Paris by acting as the principal agent in the escape of M. de Lavalette in 1815.  A man of occasional chivalrous impulses, but passionate and restless, to the extent of being incapable of keeping quiet, he looked on his position as Governor of Gibraltar not as a great military command alone, but as an active political post, and he had directed all this activity, through Morocco, against our conquered Province of Algeria, and so against France herself.  His goings to and fro betwixt Gibraltar and the opposite coast were a matter of common knowledge, and his newspaper, the Gibraltar Chronicle, edited by his Colonial Secretary, repeated every statement likely to lower French influence, make little of our arms, or stir up public feeling against us.  Arms and war material were openly exported to Tetuan and other towns in Morocco under his very eyes.  And, in short, it was easy to trace a great part of the confidence in their impunity which made Muley Abderrahman and his government so hostile on our frontier-line, and so insolent in its replies to our diplomatic agents, to his behaviour.

Such then was the principal personage with whom I had to deal from the very outset of my mission.  He was the object of my first overture.  As soon as I arrived, I proceeded to the Convent, as his official residence is called, in full uniform, with all the captains belonging to my squadron.  He received me with a politeness that bordered on the obsequious, and at once began to talk of the danger he apprehended from the presence of my squadron on that coast and before the Moorish towns; the danger to peace in general, on account of the conflicts likely to be provoked; the danger of still further exciting the warlike passions of the Mussulman population; the danger to the safety of the Christian natives, the European residents, and the consuls in Morocco; and, finally, the danger to Mr. Hay, the British Consul-General, who had just started to give personal counsels of moderation to the Emperor Muley Abderrahman.

“But indeed, General,” I replied, “I shall be too glad not to take my ships to Tangier, nor to any other point on the Morocco coast, during the negotiations.  We are tired of the state of things caused by the insolence and hostility of the Moors along our frontier.  We are going to present an ultimatum to put an end to it.  We will allow them a certain interval to reply in, and when that is up, we shall go to Tangier, either to punish or to forgive them.  Until then we shall be very glad of any efforts that may be made to calm public feeling and facilitate the acceptance of our just demands.  Until then I am quite prepared not to take my squadron to the coast of Morocco; but on one condition only—­ that the British ships do not go there either.  We cannot allow