tion that I made any
threatening resistance; equally untrue is the assertion that the blow
was given because wearing a white hat they thought I was a Tuscan. If
the first reason had been sufficient, the other, miserable as it is,
had not been necessary. But all the defence is palpably false,
contradictory, and nothing worth. An untruth defended cannot become
truth. All these facts, without troubling you further, prove the truth
of my statement, which it has been my duty to give you.

I am, &c,

James Ekskine O. Mather.

The British residents and travellers then at Florence were strongly
indignant at so cowardly and unjustifiable an attack on their young
countryman. The British residents were the pride and ornament of the
Tuscan court on days of high ceremony and festival, but on the grand
reception day, the first day of the year, they unanimously intimated
officially that they would mark their dissatisfaction of the disgraceful
assault by abstaining from presenting themselves, without the fullest
investigation and redress were granted. This feeling of indignation
rose so high that it was with difficulty the many young Englishmen at
Florence could be restrained from making an attack upon the officers of
the Croat regiment, Kinsky, amongst whom was Lieutenant Forshalier, the
brutal assailant.

After much negotiation at Florence and Vienna, the British _charge
d'affaires_ was at length informed, on the 15th of January, by Prince
Lichtenstein, that he had been authorized by Marshal Radetzky to state
that the marshal approved that an inquiry should be instituted into the
affair. This inquiry was gone into in secret, without any professional
man being permitted to be present in the interests of justice, or in
defence or support of the wounded Englishman. The city of Florence in
command of Austrian troops,--its duke replaced on his throne and there
supported by them,--all the official men and courts existing, as it
were, by the tolerance of those troops, an inquiry to investigate fairly
a charge, by those thus humbly protected, against one of the officers
of their proud protectors would seem hopeless. Yet such were the manly
independence, veracity, and courage of the Italian and French witnesses
that the whole truth came out, and, as the British _charge d'affaires_
afterwards writes to the Duc de Casigliano, the foreign minister of
Tuscany, "the evidence which has thus been obtained, conclusively
establishes that a most