'Memorandum on the Drafts of Despatches regarding the Affairs of Muscat and Zanzibar' [‎31v] (12/24)

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as to ensure success and avoid loss, and with older
men we should not have had to regret the morti
fying repulse, and the sad loss of four such fine
fellows ; but they attempted an impossibility in a
most gallant and dashing fashion, and were repulsed
without disgrace. The next time the survivors have
anything of the kind to do, every man who was in
those boats will know how to set about it, and will
succeed, unless the spirit be preached out of them
by our official lectures on their rashness.
“ Of course, what they did was very rash, but so
are all stormings and boardings and cuttings out.
It is owing to such rashness, joined to other great
qualities, that our navy is what it is. We should
have thought them very fine fellows if they had
succeeded, and I trust the Admiralty will not think
the worse of them for having honourably failed in
an enterprise so desperate that few but British
sailors would have attempted it, and in which none
could have been defeated with so little disgrace.
“ As to the tone of Colonel Felly’s letters to the
Wahabee Ameer, and the shortness of the time
allowed for compliance with the demand for com
pensation, I was at first inclined to agree with you
that the letters were too peremptory and the time
allowed too short. I wrote in this sense to Colonel
Felly.
«« But, on reconsideration, I felt inclined to trust
much to his personal knowledge of the people he
was dealing with, and I think the event proves he
was right. The Ameer, or whoever writes in his
name, clearly thought it best to knuckle down. He
immediately accepted Colonel Felly s offer to mediate,
and has sent envoys to Khatiff to discuss the terms.
These offers of mediation are the same which the
Ameer, in September, treated with contemptuous
silence, and I think it very questionable whether
they w T ould now have received such respectful
attention had Felly’s letter been milder in tone or
his demand more moderate.
“ But the main question is, whether we have any
business there at all ? and here I am not sure that
I quite concur in the view you take of our duties
and responsibilities on that coast.
“ Of course, if by taking the consequences of
living ‘ in such a country ’ is meant taking all the
consequences to which the native subjects of the
ruler are liable, I agree, as far as the treatment of
our subjects by that ruler is concerned, the cases
are exceptional in w hich we could reasonably expect
. him to treat our people better than he does his own ;
and our people, if they go there, must take their
chance of such uncertainty of life, liberty, and pro
perty as is the natural and usual characteristic of
such Governments, and the hereditary misfortune
of all their subjects.
“ But in the present case the Ruler of Muscat
was not in fault, further than that in not defending
his own people he had exposed our subjects, along
with his own, to the outrages of a third power.
“ What is our duty in such a case? Here we had