But although the prorogation afforded him some relief, M. Guizot was, nevertheless, in a position of extreme difficulty. His friends unceasingly warned him that he must resist the demands of England, or be prepared to succumb to the outburst of popular indignation which any concessions would provoke.[785] Under these circumstances he decided that complete inaction was, for the present, the safest course to adopt. "The greater the excitement," he instructed Jarnac, "the more necessary it becomes to allow it time to cool down. For the moment we must abstain from all discussion of the subject." Nevertheless, when interviewing Aberdeen, he would do well to bring forward those arguments which he himself was employing in his conversations with Lord Cowley. Stress should be laid upon the fact that Pritchard had ceased to act as consul. As a private individual whose presence was regarded as prejudicial to good order, the colonial authorities had a universally acknowledged right to expel him. At the same time, however, it could not be denied that "some of the proceedings which had attended his removal had been irregular. . . ."[786] Hitherto Lord Aberdeen had studiously refrained from formulating any precise demand. But, on August 13, after a meeting of the Cabinet, he directed Cowley to give M. Guizot clearly to understand that, unless satisfaction in some shape were voluntarily offered, he must transmit "a formal and detailed statement of the grounds upon which Her Majesty's government founded its expectations of redress."[787] In England anger at the continued silence of the French government was rising to a dangerous pitch. On August 14, at a meeting at Exeter Hall, at which Mr. Pritchard himself was present, men, who in most international disputes would have advocated peace at any price, gave utterance to the most warlike sentiments. Two days later came the news that the answer of the Emperor of Morocco to the French _ultimatum_ having been considered unsatisfactory, Tangier had been bombarded. "War," wrote M. de Jarnac, "is now generally regarded as inevitable."[788] Lord Cowley was instructed to represent that "the attack upon Tangier, after the repeated assurance of M. Guizot that it would be respected under all circumstances, had greatly surprised the British government . . . any occupation of the coast of Morocco could not fail to be viewed in a very serious light by Great Britain, and must lead to evils of great magnitude.[789]"