AN accessibility to the sentiments of others on subjects of importance
often accompanies feeble minds, yet it is not the less a true and
constituent part of practical greatness, when it exists wholly free from
that passiveness to impression which renders counsel itself injurious to
certain characters, and from that weakness of heart which, in the literal
sense of the word, is always craving advice. Exempt from all such
imperfections, say rather in perfect harmony with the excellences that
preclude them, this openness to the influxes of good sense and
information, from whatever quarter they might come, equally characterised
both Lord Nelson and Sir Alexander Ball, though each displayed it in the
way best suited to his natural temper. The former with easy hand
collected, as it passed by him, whatever could add to his own stores,
appropriated what he could assimilate, and levied subsidies of knowledge
from all the accidents of social life and familiar intercourse. Even at
the jovial board, and in the height of unrestrained merriment, a casual
suggestion, that flashed a new light on his mind, changed the boon
companion into the hero and the man of genius; and with the most graceful
transition he would make his company as serious as himself. When the
taper of his genius seemed extinguished, it was still surrounded by an
inflammable atmosphere of its own, and rekindled at the first approach of
light, and not seldom at a distance which made it seem to flame up
self-revived. In Sir Alexander Ball, the same excellence was more an
affair of system; and he would listen, even to weak men, with a patience,
which, in so careful an economist of time, always demanded my admiration,
and not seldom excited my wonder. It was one of his maxims, that a man
may suggest what he cannot give; adding, that a wild or silly plan had
more than once, from the vivid sense or distinct perception of its folly,
occasioned him to see what ought to be done in a new light, or with a
clearer insight. There is, indeed, a hopeless sterility, a mere negation
of sense and thought, which, suggesting neither difference nor contrast,
cannot even furnish hints for recollection. But on the other hand, there
are minds so whimsically constituted, that they may sometimes be
profitably interpreted by contraries, a process of which the great Tycho
Brahe is said to have availed himself in the case of the little Lackwit,
who used to sit and mutter at his feet while he was studying. A mind of
this sort we may compare to a magnetic needle, the poles of which have
been suddenly reversed by a flash of lightning, or other more obscure
accident of nature. It may be safely concluded, that to those whose
judgment or information he respected, Sir Alexander Ball did not content
himself with giving access and attention. No! he seldom failed of
consulting them whenever the subject permitted any disclosure; and where
secrecy was necessary, he well knew how to acquire their opinion without
exciting even a conjecture concerning his immediate object.
Yet, with all this readiness of attention, and with all this zeal in
collecting the sentiments of the well informed, never was a man more
completely uninfluenced by authority than Sir Alexander Ball, never one
who sought less to tranquillise his own doubts by the mere suffrage and
coincidence of others. The ablest suggestions had no conclusive weight
with him, till he had abstracted the opinion from its author, till he had
reduced it into a part of his own mind. The thoughts of others were
always acceptable, as affording him at least a chance of adding to his
materials for reflection; but they never directed his judgment, much less
superseded it. He even made a point of guarding against additional
confidence in the suggestions of his own mind, from finding that a person
of talents had formed the same conviction; unless the person, at the same
time, furnished some new argument, or had arrived at the same conclusion
by a different road. On the latter circumstance he set an especial
value, and, I may almost say, courted the company and conversation of
those whose pursuits had least resembled his own, if he thought them men
of clear and comprehensive faculties. During the period of our intimacy,
scarcely a week passed in which he did not desire me to think on some
particular subject, and to give him the result in writing. Most
frequently, by the time I had fulfilled his request he would have written
down his own thoughts; and then, with the true simplicity of a great
mind, as free from ostentation as it was above jealousy, he would collate
the two papers in my presence, and never expressed more pleasure than in
the few instances in which I had happened to light on all the arguments
and points of view which had occurred to himself, with some additional
reasons which had escaped him. A single new argument delighted him more
than the most perfect coincidence, unless, as before stated, the train of
thought had been very different from his own, and yet just and logical.
He had one quality of mind, which I have heard attributed to the late Mr.
Fox, that of deriving a keen pleasure from clear and powerful reasoning
for its own sake—a quality in the intellect which is nearly connected
with veracity and a love of justice in the moral character.
Valuing in others merits which he himself possessed, Sir Alexander Ball
felt no jealous apprehension of great talent. Unlike those vulgar
functionaries, whose place is too big for them, a truth which they
attempt to disguise from themselves, and yet feel, he was under no
necessity of arming himself against the natural superiority of genius by
factitious contempt and an industrious association of extravagance and
impracticability, with every deviation from the ordinary routine; as the
geographers in the middle ages used to designate on their meagre maps the
greater part of the world as deserts or wildernesses, inhabited by
griffins and chimæras. Competent to weigh each system or project by its
own arguments, he did not need these preventive charms and cautionary
amulets against delusion. He endeavoured to make talent instrumental to
his purposes in whatever shape it appeared, and with whatever
imperfections it might be accompanied; but wherever talent was blended
with moral worth, he sought it out, loved and cherished it. If it had
pleased Providence to preserve his life, and to place him on the same
course on which Nelson ran his race of glory, there are two points in
which Sir Alexander Ball would most closely have resembled his
illustrious friend. The first is, that in his enterprises and
engagements he would have thought nothing done, till all had been done
that was possible:—
Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.
The second, that he would have called forth all the talent and virtue
that existed within his sphere of influence, and created a band of
heroes, a gradation of officers, strong in head and strong in heart,
worthy to have been his companions and his successors in fame and public
usefulness.
Never was greater discernment shown in the selection of a fit agent, than
when Sir Alexander Ball was stationed off the coast of Malta to intercept
the supplies destined for the French garrison, and to watch the movements
of the French commanders, and those of the inhabitants who had been so
basely betrayed into their power. Encouraged by the well-timed promises
of the English captain, the Maltese rose through all their casals (or
country towns) and themselves commenced the work of their emancipation,
by storming the citadel at Civita Vecchia, the ancient metropolis of
Malta, and the central height of the island. Without discipline, without
a military leader, and almost without arms, these brave peasants
succeeded, and destroyed the French garrison by throwing them over the
battlements into the trench of the citadel. In the course of this
blockade, and of the tedious siege of Valetta, Sir Alexander Ball
displayed all that strength of character, that variety and versatility of
talent, and that sagacity, derived in part from habitual circumspection,
but which, when the occasion demanded it, appeared intuitive and like an
instinct; at the union of which, in the same man, one of our oldest naval
commanders once told me, “he could never exhaust his wonder.” The
citizens of Valetta were fond of relating their astonishment, and that of
the French, at Captain Ball’s ship wintering at anchor out of the reach
of the guns, in a depth of fathom unexampled, on the assured
impracticability of which the garrison had rested their main hope of
regular supplies. Nor can I forget, or remember without some portion of
my original feeling, the solemn enthusiasm with which a venerable old
man, belonging to one of the distant casals, showed me the sea coombe,
where their father Ball (for so they commonly called him) first landed,
and afterwards pointed out the very place on which he first stepped on
their island; while the countenances of his townsmen, who accompanied
him, gave lively proofs that the old man’s enthusiasm was the
representative of the common feeling.
There is no reason to suppose that Sir Alexander Ball was at any time
chargeable with that weakness so frequent in Englishmen, and so injurious
to our interests abroad, of despising the inhabitants of other countries,
of losing all their good qualities in their vices, of making no allowance
for those vices, from their religious or political impediments, and still
more of mistaking for vices a mere difference of manners and customs.
But if ever he had any of this erroneous feeling, he completely freed
himself from it by living among the Maltese during their arduous trials,
as long as the French continued masters of their capital. He witnessed
their virtues, and learnt to understand in what various shapes and even
disguises the valuable parts of human nature may exist. In many
individuals, whose littleness and meanness in the common intercourse of
life would have stamped them at once as contemptible and worthless, with
ordinary Englishmen, he had found such virtues of disinterested
patriotism, fortitude, and self-denial, as would have done honour to an
ancient Roman.
There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly feeling,
very different even from that which is the most like it, the character of
a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in the rest of Europe. This feeling
probably originated in the fortunate circumstance, that the titles of our
English nobility follow the law of their property, and are inherited by
the eldest sons only. From this source under the influences of our
constitution, and of our astonishing trade, it has diffused itself in
different modifications through the whole country. The uniformity of our
dress among all classes above that of the day labourer, while it has
authorised all classes to assume the appearance of gentlemen, has at the
same time inspired the wish to conform their manners, and still more
their ordinary actions in social intercourse, to their notions of the
gentlemanly, the most commonly received attribute of which character is a
certain generosity in trifles. On the other hand, the encroachments of
the lower classes on the higher, occasioned, and favoured by this
resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any cognisable marks of
distinction, have rendered each class more reserved and jealous in their
general communion, and far more than our climate, or natural temper, have
caused that haughtiness and reserve in our outward demeanour, which is so
generally complained of among foreigners. Far be it from me to
depreciate the value of this gentlemanly feeling: I respect it under all
its forms and varieties, from the House of Commons to the gentleman in
the shilling gallery. It is always the ornament of virtue, and
oftentimes a support; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its worth,
as a moral good, is by no means in proportion to its value, as a social
advantage. These observations are not irrelevant; for to the want of
reflection, that this diffusion of gentlemanly feeling among us is not
the growth of our moral excellence, but the effect of various accidental
advantages peculiar to England; to our not considering that it is
unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same consequences, where the
same causes have not existed to produce them; and, lastly, to our
proneness to regard the absence of this character (which, as I have
before said, does, for the greater part, and, in the common apprehension,
consist in a certain frankness and generosity in the detail of action) as
decisive against the sum total of personal or national worth; we must, I
am convinced, attribute a large portion of that conduct, which in many
instances has left the inhabitants of countries conquered or appropriated
by Great Britain, doubtful whether the various solid advantages which
they derived from our protection and just government, were not bought
dearly by the wounds inflicted on their feelings and prejudices by the
contemptuous and insolent demeanour of the English as individuals. The
reader who bears this remark in mind, will meet, in the course of this
narration, more than one passage that will serve as its comment and
illustration.
It was, I know, a general opinion among the English in the Mediterranean,
that Sir Alexander Ball thought too well of the Maltese, and did not
share in the enthusiasm of Britons concerning their own superiority. To
the former part of the charge I shall only reply at present, that a more
venial, and almost desirable fault, can scarcely be attributed to a
governor, than that of a strong attachment to the people whom he was sent
to govern. The latter part of the charge is false, if we are to
understand by it, that he did not think his countrymen superior on the
whole to the other nations of Europe; but it is true, as far as relates
to his belief, that the English thought themselves still better than they
are; that they dwelt on and exaggerated their national virtues, and
weighed them by the opposite vices of foreigners, instead of the virtues
which those foreigners possessed and they themselves wanted. Above all,
as statesmen, we must consider qualities by their practical uses. Thus,
he entertained no doubt that the English were superior to all others in
the kind and the degree of their courage, which is marked by far greater
enthusiasm than the courage of the Germans and northern nations, and by a
far greater steadiness and self-subsistency than that of the French. It
is more closely connected with the character of the individual. The
courage of an English army (he used to say) is the sum total of the
courage which the individual soldiers bring with them to it, rather than
of that which they derive from it. This remark of Sir Alexander’s was
forcibly recalled to my mind when I was at Naples. A Russian and an
English regiment were drawn up together in the same square: “See,” said a
Neapolitan to me, who had mistaken me for one of his countrymen, “there
is but one face in that whole regiment, while in that” (pointing to the
English) “every soldier has a face of his own.” On the other hand, there
are qualities scarcely less requisite to the completion of the military
character, in which Sir A. did not hesitate to think the English inferior
to the continental nations; as for instance, both in the power and the
disposition to endure privations; in the friendly temper necessary, when
troops of different nations are to act in concert; in their obedience to
the regulations of their commanding officers, respecting their treatment
of the inhabitants of the countries through which they are marching, as
well as in many other points, not immediately connected with their
conduct in the field: and, above all, in sobriety and temperance. During
the siege of Valetta, especially during the sore distress to which the
besiegers were for some time exposed from the failure of provision, Sir
Alexander Ball had an ample opportunity of observing and weighing the
separate merits and demerits of the native and of the English troops; and
surely since the publication of Sir John Moore’s campaign, there can be
no just offence taken, though I should say, that before the walls of
Valetta, as well as in the plains of Galicia, an indignant commander
might, with too great propriety, have addressed the English soldiery in
the words of an old dramatist—
Will you still owe your virtues to your bellies?
And only then think nobly when y’are full?
Doth fodder keep you honest? Are you bad
When out of flesh? And think you’t an excuse
Of vile and ignominious actions, that
Y’ are lean and out of liking?
CARTWRIGHT’S _Love’s Convert_.
From the first insurrectionary movement to the final departure of the
French from the island, though the civil and military powers and the
whole of the island, save Valetta, were in the hands of the peasantry,
not a single act of excess can be charged against the Maltese, if we
except the razing of one house at Civita Vecchia belonging to a notorious
and abandoned traitor, the creature and hireling of the French. In no
instance did they injure, insult, or plunder, any one of the native
nobility, or employ even the appearance of force toward them, except in
the collection of the lead and iron from their houses and gardens, in
order to supply themselves with bullets; and this very appearance was
assumed from the generous wish to shelter the nobles from the resentment
of the French, should the patriotic efforts of the peasantry prove
unsuccessful. At the dire command of famine the Maltese troops did
indeed once force their way to the ovens in which the bread for the
British soldiery was baked, and were clamorous that an equal division
should be made. I mention this unpleasant circumstance, because it
brought into proof the firmness of Sir Alexander Ball’s character, his
presence of mind, and generous disregard of danger and personal
responsibility, where the slavery or emancipation, the misery or the
happiness, of an innocent and patriotic people were involved; and because
his conduct in this exigency evinced that his general habits of
circumspection and deliberation were the results of wisdom and complete
self-possession, and not the easy virtues of a spirit constitutionally
timorous and hesitating. He was sitting at table with the principal
British officers, when a certain general addressed him in strong and
violent terms concerning this outrage of the Maltese, reminding him of
the necessity of exerting his commanding influence in the present case,
or the consequences must be taken. “What,” replied Sir Alexander Ball,
“would you have us do? Would you have us threaten death to men dying
with famine? Can you suppose that the hazard of being shot will weigh
with whole regiments acting under a common necessity? Does not the
extremity of hunger take away all difference between men and animals? and
is it not as absurd to appeal to the prudence of a body of men starving,
as to a herd of famished wolves? No, general, I will not degrade myself
or outrage humanity by menacing famine with massacre! More effectual
means must be taken.” With these words he rose and left the room, and
having first consulted with Sir Thomas Troubridge, he determined at his
own risk on a step, which the extreme necessity warranted, and which the
conduct of the Neapolitan court amply justified. For this court, though
terror-stricken by the French, was still actuated by hatred to the
English, and a jealousy of their power in the Mediterranean; and in this
so strange and senseless a manner, that we must join the extremes of
imbecility and treachery in the same cabinet, in order to find it
comprehensible. Though the very existence of Naples and Sicily, as a
nation, depended wholly and exclusively on British support; though the
royal family owed their personal safety to the British fleet; though not
only their dominions and their rank, but the liberty and even the lives
of Ferdinand and his family, were interwoven with our success; yet with
an infatuation scarcely credible, the most affecting representations of
the distress of the besiegers, and of the utter insecurity of Sicily if
the French remained possessors of Malta, were treated with neglect; and
the urgent remonstrances for the permission of importing corn from
Messina, were answered only by sanguinary edicts precluding all supply.
Sir Alexander Ball sent for his senior lieutenant, and gave him orders to
proceed immediately to the port of Messina, and there to seize and bring
with him to Malta the ships laden with corn, of the number of which Sir
Alexander had received accurate information. These orders were executed
without delay, to the great delight and profit of the shipowners and
proprietors; the necessity of raising the siege was removed; and the
author of the measure waited in calmness for the consequences that might
result to himself personally. But not a complaint, not a murmur,
proceeded from the court of Naples. The sole result was, that the
governor of Malta became an especial object of its hatred, its fear, and
its respect.
The whole of this tedious siege, from its commencement to the signing of
the capitulation, called forth into constant activity the rarest and most
difficult virtues of a commanding mind; virtues of no show or splendour
in the vulgar apprehension, yet more infallible characteristics of true
greatness than the most unequivocal displays of enterprise and active
daring. Scarcely a day passed in which Sir Alexander Ball’s patience,
forbearance, and inflexible constancy were not put to the severest trial.
He had not only to remove the misunderstandings that arose between the
Maltese and their allies, to settle the differences among the Maltese
themselves, and to organise their efforts; he was likewise engaged in the
more difficult and unthankful task of counteracting the weariness,
discontent, and despondency of his own countrymen—a task, however, which
he accomplished by management and address, and an alternation of real
firmness with apparent yielding. During many months he remained the only
Englishman who did not think the siege hopeless, and the object
worthless. He often spoke of the time in which he resided at the country
seat of the grand master at St. Antonio, four miles from Valetta, as
perhaps the most trying period of his life. For some weeks Captain
Vivian was his sole English companion, of whom, as his partner in
anxiety, he always expressed himself with affectionate esteem. Sir
Alexander Ball’s presence was absolutely necessary to the Maltese, who,
accustomed to be governed by him, became incapable of acting in concert
without his immediate influence. In the outburst of popular emotion, the
impulse which produces an insurrection, is for a brief while its
sufficient pilot: the attraction constitutes the cohesion, and the common
provocation, supplying an immediate object, not only unites, but directs
the multitude. But this first impulse had passed away, and Sir Alexander
Ball was the one individual who possessed the general confidence. On him
they relied with implicit faith; and even after they had long enjoyed the
blessings of British government and protection, it was still remarkable
with what child-like helplessness they were in the habit of applying to
him, even in their private concerns. It seemed as if they thought him
made on purpose to think for them all. Yet his situation at St. Antonio
was one of great peril; and he attributed his preservation to the
dejection which had now begun to prey on the spirits of the French
garrison, and which rendered them unenterprising and almost passive,
aided by the dread which the nature of the country inspired. For
subdivided as it was into small fields, scarcely larger than a cottage
garden, and each of these little squares of land inclosed with
substantial stone walls; these too from the necessity of having the
fields perfectly level, rising in tiers above each other; the whole of
the inhabited part of the island was an effective fortification for all
the purposes of annoyance and offensive warfare. Sir Alexander Ball
exerted himself successfully in procuring information respecting the
state and temper of the garrison, and, by the assistance of the clergy
and the almost universal fidelity of the Maltese, contrived that the
spies in the pay of the French should be in truth his own confidential
agents. He had already given splendid proofs that he could outfight
them; but here, and in his after diplomatic intercourse previous to the
recommencement of the war, he likewise outwitted them. He once told me
with a smile, as we were conversing on the practice of laying wagers,
that he was sometimes inclined to think that the final perseverance in
the siege was not a little indebted to several valuable bets of his own,
he well knowing at the time, and from information which himself alone
possessed, that he should certainly lose them. Yet this artifice had a
considerable effect in suspending the impatience of the officers, and in
supplying topics for dispute and conversation. At length, however, the
two French frigates, the sailing of which had been the subject of these
wagers, left the great harbour on the 24th of August, 1800, with a part
of the garrison: and one of them soon became a prize to the English. Sir
Alexander Ball related to me the circumstances which occasioned the
escape of the other; but I do not recollect them with sufficient accuracy
to dare repeat them in this place. On the 15th of September following,
the capitulation was signed, and after a blockade of two years the
English obtained possession of Valetta, and remained masters of the whole
island and its dependencies.
Anxious not to give offence, but more anxious to communicate the truth,
it is not without pain that I find myself under the moral obligation of
remonstrating against the silence concerning Sir Alexander Ball’s
services or the transfer of them to others. More than once has the
latter aroused my indignation in the reported speeches of the House of
Commons: and as to the former, I need only state that in Rees’s
Encyclopædia there is an historical article of considerable length under
the word Malta, in which Sir Alexander’s name does not once occur!
During a residence of eighteen months in that island, I possessed and
availed myself of the best possible means of information, not only from
eye-witnesses, but likewise from the principal agents themselves. And I
now thus publicly and unequivocally assert, that to Sir A. Ball
pre-eminently—and if I had said, to Sir A. Ball alone, the ordinary use
of the word under such circumstances would bear me out—the capture and
the preservation of Malta were owing, with every blessing that a powerful
mind and a wise heart could confer on its docile and grateful
inhabitants. With a similar pain I proceed to avow my sentiments on this
capitulation, by which Malta was delivered up to his Britannic Majesty
and his allies, without the least mention made of the Maltese. With a
warmth honourable both to his head and his heart, Sir Alexander Ball
pleaded, as not less a point of sound policy than of plain justice, that
the Maltese, by some representative, should be made a party in the
capitulation, and a joint subscriber in the signature. They had never
been the slaves or the property of the Knights of St. John, but freemen
and the true landed proprietors of the country, the civil and military
government of which, under certain restrictions, had been vested in that
Order; yet checked by the rights and influences of the clergy and the
native nobility, and by the customs and ancient laws of the island. This
trust the Knights had, with the blackest treason and the most profligate
perjury, betrayed and abandoned. The right of government of course
reverted to the landed proprietors and the clergy. Animated by a just
sense of this right, the Maltese had risen of their own accord, had
contended for it in defiance of death and danger, had fought bravely, and
endured patiently. Without undervaluing the military assistance
afterwards furnished by Great Britain (though how scanty this was before
the arrival of General Pigot is well known), it remains undeniable, that
the Maltese had taken the greatest share both in the fatigues and in the
privations consequent on the siege; and that had not the greatest virtues
and the most exemplary fidelity been uniformly displayed by them, the
English troops (they not being more numerous than they had been for the
greater part of the two years) could not possibly have remained before
the fortifications of Valetta, defended as that city was by a French
garrison that greatly outnumbered the British besiegers. Still less
could there have been the least hope of ultimate success; as if any part
of the Maltese peasantry had been friendly to the French, or even
indifferent, if they had not all indeed been most zealous and persevering
in their hostility towards them, it would have been impracticable so to
blockade that island as to have precluded the arrival of supplies. If
the siege had proved unsuccessful, the Maltese were well aware that they
should be exposed to all the horrors which revenge and wounded pride
could dictate to an unprincipled, rapacious, and sanguinary soldiery; and
now that success has crowned their efforts, is this to be their reward,
that their own allies are to bargain for them with the French as for a
herd of slaves, whom the French had before purchased from a former
proprietor? If it be urged, that there is no established government in
Malta, is it not equally true that through the whole population of the
island there is not a single dissentient? and thus that the chief
inconvenience which an established authority is to obviate is virtually
removed by the admitted fact of their unanimity? And have they not a
bishop, and a dignified clergy, their judges and municipal magistrates,
who were at all times sharers in the power of the government, and now,
supported by the unanimous suffrage of the inhabitants, have a rightful
claim to be considered as its representatives? Will it not be oftener
said than answered, that the main difference between French and English
injustice rests in this point alone, that the French seized on the
Maltese without any previous pretences of friendship, while the English
procured possession of the island by means of their friendly promises,
and by the co-operation of the natives afforded in confident reliance on
these promises? The impolicy of refusing the signature on the part of
the Maltese was equally evident; since such refusal could answer no one
purpose but that of alienating their affections by a wanton insult to
their feelings. For the Maltese were not only ready but desirous and
eager to place themselves at the same time under British protection, to
take the oaths of loyalty as subjects of the British Crown, and to
acknowledge their island to belong to it. These representations,
however, were overruled; and I dare affirm from my own experience in the
Mediterranean, that our conduct in this instance, added to the impression
which had been made at Corsica, Minorca, and elsewhere, and was often
referred to by men of reflection in Sicily, who have more than once said
to me, “A connection with Great Britain, with the consequent extension
and security of our commerce, are indeed great blessings: but who can
rely on their permanence? or that we shall not be made to pay bitterly
for our zeal as partisans of England, whenever it shall suit its plans to
deliver us back to our old oppressors?”