Who was I to get it from?
The governments of Naples and Sicily either knew not, or chose to keep me in ignorance.

Was I to wait patiently until I heard certain accounts?
If Egypt were their object, before I could hear of them they would have been in India.

To do nothing was disgraceful; therefore I made use of my understanding.

I am before your lordships' judgment; and if, under all circumstances, it is decided that I am wrong, I ought, for the sake of our country, to be superseded; for at this moment, when I know the French are not in Alexandria, I hold the same opinion as off Cape Passaro--that, under all circumstances, I was right in steering for Alexandria; and by that opinion I must stand or fall." Captain Ball, to whom he showed this paper, told him he should recommend a friend never to begin a defence of his conduct before he was accused of error: he might give the fullest reasons for what he had done, expressed in such terms as would evince that he had acted from the strongest conviction of being right; and of course he must expect that the public would view it in the same light.

Captain Ball judged rightly of the public, whose first impulses, though, from want of sufficient information, they must frequently be erroneous, are generally founded upon just feelings.