From the 10th of September, when Messina fell, to the
30th of March, when we were kindly pleased to let the armistice
expire, the English fleet persevered in reducing the King to inaction,
and saving his rebellious subjects from the operation of his armies.
But for our own fleet, there is not a doubt that Catania and Palermo
must have fallen in a fortnight, but we nursed, and fostered, and
prolonged the insurrection for above half a year. Talk of your
humanity! Boast of your Admiral and his French associate interposing
to save bloodshed! Whose fault was it that Catania, having profited by
the respite you forced the King to grant, still held out, instead of
opening her gates as soon as Messina had fallen, when the insurrection
must have been crushed in its cradle? Who but your commanders and
envoys are to blame for the necessity under which they placed
the King's troops of fighting a battle on the 6th of April? That
engagement no doubt put down the insurrection; but many lives were
lost in it. Five-and-twenty officers were killed and wounded on the
King's side, and some hundreds of men must likewise have expiated
their loyalty with their lives, to say nothing of the insurgent loss.
Palermo fell without a struggle, after all the boastings of your
envoys and captains, and consuls and vice-consuls. Would she have
resisted more fiercely in September? The insurgent chiefs fled, and
got on board the _Vectis_, one of the two vessels of war which you
suffered the Sicilian rebels to fit out in your ports, when you
refused all help to your ancient friend's ambassador in checking this
outrage on the law of nations, and when by a celebrated 'inadvertence'
you suffered those rebels to obtain from the Tower a supply of arms,
wherewith to fight your ally's armies.
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