l or insular territories.
In fact, both parties to the war, Great Britain and France, derived
from the infringement of neutrality advantages which checked their
remonstrances, and gave the feebler nations an apt retort, when taken
to task in their painful efforts to preserve an attitude that was
rather double-faced than neutral. If France, on the one hand, was
deriving a considerable revenue from Spanish subsidies, and subsisting
an army corps upon Neapolitan territory, Great Britain, on the other,
could scarcely have maintained her fleet in the Gulf of Lyons, if
unable to get fresh provisions and water from neutral ports; for, save
Gibraltar and Malta, she had none that was her own or allied. Under
these conditions, small privateers, often mere rowboats, but under the
colors of France or the Italian Republic, swarmed in every port and
inlet; in the Adriatic,--a deep, secluded pocket, particularly
favorable to marauding,--in the Ionian Islands, along the Barbary
coast, upon the shores of Spain, and especially in Sicily, whose
central position and extensive seaboard commanded every trade-route
east of the Balearics.

Nelson's correspondence is full of remonstrances addressed to the
various neutral states--including even Austria, whose shore-line on
the Adriatic was extensive--for their toleration of these abuses,
which rested ultimately upon the fear of Bonaparte. He has, also,
constant explanations to make to his own Government, or to British
ministers at the different Courts, of the acts of his cruisers in
destroying the depredators within neutral limits, when found
red-handed. He makes no apologies, but stands firmly by his officers,
who, when right, could always count upon his support in trouble. He
never left a man in the lurch, or damned him with faint approval. "The
protection afforded the enemy's privateers and rowboats in the
different neutral ports of these seas, so contrary to every known law
of neutrality, is extremely destructive of our commerce.... Although
their conduct is infamous, yet their doing wrong is no rule why we
should. There is a general principle which I have laid down for the
regulation of the officers' conduct under my command--which is never
to break the neutrality of any port or place; but never to consider as
neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made. It is
certainly justifiable to attack any vessel in a place from whence she
makes an attack." "I very fully approve eve