steam, moves at the rate of twenty or thirty miles in the hour. However, such is this zealous argument to prove the favourite point that the rebels are always right and the Government always wrong. Alas! that so much good information and subtlety of argument should be thrown away. This able and argumentative paper crossed on its way out another from our own Admiral on its way homeward, in which he said he had inquired from the Governor of the Ionian Islands, and had ascertained that the ship was at least eight miles from the shore—so there was an end of the argument upon distance; and that of the insult to our flag was as shortly disposed of by a letter from our own Admiralty, stating that it was only a stratagem which our own Navy constantly employed, freely using the flags of other nations for its own purposes.
I rejoice to say, and your Lordships must be rejoiced to hear it, that I am approaching the end of this subject, but I cannot abstain from observing, to show how completely we took part with the one side against the other, that we treated the Sicilian prisoners as if they had been our allies, our own subjects. They were taken in rebellion, with arms in their hands, against their lawful Sovereign. But Lord Napier complains to Prince Cariati of his treatment of the prisoners, and says it would be observed upon in England, would raise a strong feeling on its exposure and publication, and that the feeling would be such that Her Majesty's Government could scarcely fail to take notice of it. But how? For those prisoners were guilty of municipal offence against the municipal law of their own country. Suppose, contrary to all probability and possibility, hostilities had ensued upon the late attempt at rebellion
