... King Bomba’s insult to England, through the British Mission at Naples, must be properly atoned for. Clarendon being at Paris, nothing can be decided till he returns, and the Cabinet can be assembled. But I have written to Clarendon to say that my opinion is that we ought to insist upon the immediate dismissal of Mazza, and upon a promise that he shall never again be employed in any public capacity. I would not make this demand till our reserve squadron, now in attendance on the Queen, but which will return with her on Tuesday, and which consists of three line-of-battle ships, shall have anchored in the Bay of Naples, opposite the King’s Palace, and shall have taken on board the Mission and the Consul, and then I would have a boat sent on shore, with a demand that in two hours an answer should be sent by the King, saying that Mazza was dismissed, allowing half an hour for the letter to go, half an hour for the answer to come back, and a whole hour for writing the answer. If the time passed without a satisfactory reply, the palace should share the fate of Sweaborg[D] (_e poi dopo_), if that should not be sufficient. However, we shall see what resolution may be come to when the Cabinet meets on the question. Yours affectionately, PALMERSTON.” That Ferdinand II. was extremely loth to dismiss Mazza may be gathered from his delay in making up his mind to do so. The case, however, was urgent, and, pressed by his son Francis to hesitate no longer, inasmuch as the Minister was aware of his impending fate, the King removed Mazza from his office, and issued a decree[E] stating that he had been called to _another office_. Amid all this turmoil and confusion in the Government of Naples—this system of continuous oppression—there was one person who, notwithstanding all his misdeeds, may fairly claim some little share of our commiseration—the King himself. On the evidence of Mr. Gladstone and others, it is clear that Ferdinand was not wholly without his good traits of character. He was not devoid of a certain amount of intelligence. Tyranny and slavery, however, exercise a doubly evil influence, and harm the despot as much as the victim, the owner as the slave. At the time of the Mazza case, his Majesty, taught by experience, had arrived at that wholesome judgment of persons and things which trusts nobody and nothing. He had long ceased to put confidence even in his own Ministers; political matters he directed himself, and himself wrote all the more important political despatches, many of which display considerable acumen. It would not, indeed, be unfair to impute a portion of his faults to the peculiar character of his subjects, of whom he was wont to say that they differed so much from, and were so greatly inferior to, any other people of the Peninsula, that he alone could govern them.