nt and august consort, the worthy daughter of Maria Theresa,
aided by the keen council of our immortal Nelson, and the penetrative
wisdom and address of the British minister and his accomplished lady,
had not preserved his Sicilian, majesty's unsuspecting mind from the
ruinous effects of such, destructive machinations. Nothing can possibly
be more obvious, than that the advice of these friendly fellow-sufferers
must necessarily have been sincere; and, if the king really did
hesitate, before he embraced a design which nothing but necessity could
justify, it must only be ascribed to that ardent desire of constantly
doing what is right, which finally induced his majesty to adopt the
proposed salutary measure. The king, however, had by no means abandoned
his loyal Neapolitan subjects, in thus guarding against the treasons of
the disloyal; that would not have been a measure for our exalted hero or
his estimable friends ever to have advised, or either of their Sicilian
majesties to have adopted. On the contrary, Prince Pignatelli had been
previously created a viceroy; a grand, police guard established, to
preserve the tranquillity of the city during his majesty's absence,
commanded by officers selected equally from the respective classes of
the nobility and private citizens; and large sums of money, with a
prodigious number of arms, freely distributed among the Lazzaroni, to
preserve all the advantages of their accustomed ardent zeal and loyal
attachment. It was, therefore, in fact, only a temporary removal of the
court of the King of the Two Sicilies, from his capital of Naples, in
one grand division of his dominions, at a most critical period, to that
of Palermo, in the other. In short, the prudence of the precaution soon
manifested itself by the event; and the noble part which our immortal
hero so successfully performed, by his consummate wisdom, on the
important occasion, liberally interwove, with the civic laurels of
Italy, the honoured wreath of naval glory, which had been recently and
universally yielded to his invincible valour on the banks of the Nile.

END OF VOLUME THE FIRST.

---------------
Printed by Stanhope and Tilling,
Ranelagh

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of the Right Honourable
Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2), by James Harrison

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NELSON, VOL. I ***

***** This file should be named 16912.txt or 16912.zip *****
This and al