Hitherto Lord Aberdeen had studiously refrained from formulating any precise demand. But, on August 13, after a meeting of the Cabinet, he directed Cowley to give M. Guizot clearly to understand that, unless satisfaction in some shape were voluntarily offered, he must transmit "a formal and detailed statement of the grounds upon which Her Majesty's government founded its expectations of redress."[787] In England anger at the continued silence of the French government was rising to a dangerous pitch. On August 14, at a meeting at Exeter Hall, at which Mr. Pritchard himself was present, men, who in most international disputes would have advocated peace at any price, gave utterance to the most warlike sentiments. Two days later came the news that the answer of the Emperor of Morocco to the French _ultimatum_ having been considered unsatisfactory, Tangier had been bombarded. "War," wrote M. de Jarnac, "is now generally regarded as inevitable."[788] Lord Cowley was instructed to represent that "the attack upon Tangier, after the repeated assurance of M. Guizot that it would be respected under all circumstances, had greatly surprised the British government . . . any occupation of the coast of Morocco could not fail to be viewed in a very serious light by Great Britain, and must lead to evils of great magnitude.[789]"
M. Guizot, however, adhered resolutely to his plan "of allowing time for the excitement to cool down" in England, and he still forbore to offer any satisfaction for the treatment to which Mr. Pritchard had been subjected. Both he and the King appear to have strangely underestimated the intensity of the resentment to which the Tahiti affair had given rise. "The two governments," he informed Jarnac, "were not yet agreed in their appreciation of the facts imputed to Mr. Pritchard," and it was, consequently, impossible for the present to discuss the nature of the reparation which might be due to him. Again, a few days later, he directed him to inform Lord Aberdeen that his despatch of the 13th would have to be deliberated upon by the Council, "many of the members of which were absent from Paris."[790] Meanwhile, the press of both countries was busily engaged in embittering the quarrel. Some highly offensive attacks upon the private life of Mr. Pritchard appeared in the French papers, whilst _The Times_ published letters, purporting to have been written by naval officers who had witnessed the bombardment of Tangier, in which the most insulting doubts were cast upon the seamanship of the Prince de Joinville and upon the fighting qualities of the French sailors.[791] M. Guizot, however, continued to display a lofty indifference to the popular excitement on both sides of the Channel. He was content to enjoin M. de Jarnac to impress upon Lord Aberdeen that it "would be a disgrace, were the peace of the world to be disturbed on account of Pritchard, Pomare and d'Aubigny."[792]