CAPTAIN BALL’S services in Malta were honoured with his sovereign’s
approbation, transmitted in a letter from the Secretary Dundas, and with
a baronetcy. A thousand pounds were at the same time directed to be paid
him from the Maltese treasury. The best and most appropriate addition to
the applause of his king and his country, Sir Alexander Ball found in the
feelings and faithful affection of the Maltese. The enthusiasm
manifested in reverential gestures and shouts of triumph whenever their
friend and deliverer appeared in public, was the utterance of a deep
feeling, and in nowise the mere ebullition of animal sensibility; which
is not indeed a part of the Maltese character. The truth of this
observation will not be doubted by any person who has witnessed the
religious processions in honour of the favourite saints, both at Valetta
and at Messina or Palermo, and who must have been struck with the
contrast between the apparent apathy, or at least the perfect sobriety of
the Maltese, and the fanatical agitations of the Sicilian populace.
Among the latter each man’s soul seems hardly containable in his body,
like a prisoner whose gaol is on fire, flying madly from one barred
outlet to another; while the former might suggest the suspicion that
their bodies were on the point of sinking into the same slumber with
their understandings. But their political deliverance was a thing that
came home to their hearts, and intertwined with their most impassioned
recollections, personal and patriotic. To Sir Alexander Ball exclusively
the Maltese themselves attributed their emancipation; on him too they
rested their hopes of the future. Whenever he appeared in Valetta, the
passengers on each side, through the whole length of the street, stopped,
and remained uncovered till he had passed; the very clamours of the
market-place were hushed at his entrance, and then exchanged for shouts
of joy and welcome. Even after the lapse of years he never appeared in
any one of their casals, which did not lie in the direct road between
Valetta and St. Antonio, his summer residence, but the women and
children, with such of the men who were not at labour in their fields,
fell into ranks and followed or preceded him, singing the Maltese song
which had been made in his honour, and which was scarcely less familiar
to the inhabitants of Malta and Gozo than “God save the King” to Britons.
When he went to the gate through the city, the young men refrained
talking, and the aged arose and stood up. When the ear heard then it
blessed him, and when the eye saw him it gave witness to him, because he
delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and those that had
none to help them. The blessing of them that were ready to perish came
upon him, and he caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.
These feelings were afterwards amply justified by his administration of
the government; and the very excesses of their gratitude on their first
deliverance proved, in the end, only to be acknowledgments antedated.
For some time after the departure of the French, the distress was so
general and so severe, that a large proportion of the lower classes
became mendicants, and one of the greatest thoroughfares of Valetta still
retains the name of the “_Nix mangiare stairs_,” from the crowd who used
there to assail the ears of the passengers with cries of “_nix
mangiare_,” or “nothing to eat,” the former word _nix_ being the low
German pronunciation of _nichts_, nothing. By what means it was
introduced into Malta, I know not; but it became the common vehicle both
of solicitation and refusal, the Maltese thinking it an English word, and
the English supposing it to be Maltese. I often felt it as a pleasing
remembrancer of the evil day gone by, when a tribe of little children,
quite naked, as is the custom of that climate, and each with a pair of
gold earrings in its ears, and all fat and beautifully proportioned,
would suddenly leave their play, and, looking round to see that their
parents were not in sight, change their shouts of merriment for “_nix
mangiare_,” awkwardly imitating the plaintive tones of mendicancy; while
the white teeth in their little swarthy faces gave a splendour to the
happy and confessing laugh with which they received the good-humoured
rebuke or refusal, and ran back to their former sport.
In the interim between the capitulation of the French garrison and Sir
Alexander Ball’s appointment as His Majesty’s civil commissioner for
Malta, his zeal for the Maltese was neither suspended nor unproductive of
important benefits. He was enabled to remove many prejudices and
misunderstandings, and to persons of no inconsiderable influence gave
juster notions of the true importance of the island to Great Britain. He
displayed the magnitude of the trade of the Mediterranean in its existing
state; showed the immense extent to which it might be carried, and the
hollowness of the opinion that this trade was attached to the south of
France by any natural or indissoluble bond of connection. I have some
reason for likewise believing that his wise and patriotic representations
prevented Malta from being made the seat of and pretext for a numerous
civil establishment, in hapless imitation of Corsica, Ceylon, and the
Cape of Good Hope. It was at least generally rumoured that it had been
in the contemplation of the Ministry to appoint Sir Ralph Abercrombie as
governor, with a salary of £10,000 a year, and to reside in England,
while one of his countrymen was to be the lieutenant-governor at £5,000 a
year, to which were to be added a long _etcetera_ of other offices and
places of proportional emolument. This threatened appendix to the State
Calendar may have existed only in the imaginations of the reporters, yet
inspired some uneasy apprehensions in the minds of many well-wishers to
the Maltese, who knew that—for a foreign settlement at least, and one,
too, possessing in all the ranks and functions of society an ample
population of its own—such a stately and wide-branching tree of
patronage, though delightful to the individuals who are to pluck its
golden apples, sheds, like the manchineel, unwholesome and corrosive dews
on the multitude who are to rest beneath its shade. It need not,
however, be doubted, that Sir Alexander Ball would exert himself to
preclude any such intention, by stating and evincing the extreme impolicy
and injustice of the plan, as well as its utter inutility in the case of
Malta. With the exception of the governor and of the public secretary,
both of whom undoubtedly should be natives of Great Britain and appointed
by the British Government, there was no civil office that could be of the
remotest advantage to the island which was not already filled by the
natives, and the functions of which none could perform so well as they.
The number of inhabitants (he would state) was prodigious compared with
the extent of the island, though from the fear of the Moors one-fourth of
its surface remained unpeopled and uncultivated. To deprive, therefore,
the middle and lower classes of such places as they had been accustomed
to hold, would be cruel; while the places held by the nobility were, for
the greater part such as none but natives could perform the duties of.
By any innovation we should affront the higher classes and alienate the
affections of all, not only without any imaginable advantage but with the
certainty of great loss. Were Englishmen to be employed, the salaries
must be increased fourfold, and would yet be scarcely worth acceptance;
and in higher offices, such as those of the civil and criminal judges,
the salaries must be augmented more than tenfold. For, greatly to the
credit of their patriotism and moral character, the Maltese gentry sought
these places as honourable distinctions, which endeared them to their
fellow-countrymen, and at the same time rendered the yoke of the Order
somewhat less grievous and galling. With the exception of the Maltese
secretary, whose situation was one of incessant labour, and who at the
same time performed the duties of law counsellor to the Government, the
highest salaries scarcely exceeded £100 a year, and were barely
sufficient to defray the increased expenses of the functionaries for an
additional equipage, or one of more imposing appearance. Besides, it was
of importance that the person placed at the head of that Government
should be looked up to by the natives, and possess the means of
distinguishing and rewarding those who had been most faithful and zealous
in their attachment to Great Britain, and hostile to their former
tyrants. The number of the employments to be conferred would give
considerable influence to His Majesty’s civil representative, while the
trifling amount of the emolument attached to each precluded all
temptation of abusing it.
Sir Alexander Ball would likewise, it is probable, urge, that the
commercial advantages of Malta, which were most intelligible to the
English public, and best fitted to render our retention of the island
popular, must necessarily be of very slow growth, though finally they
would become great, and of an extent not to be calculated. For this
reason, therefore, it was highly desirable that the possession should be,
and appear to be, at least inexpensive. After the British Government had
made one advance for a stock of corn sufficient to place the island a
year beforehand, the sum total drawn from Great Britain need not exceed
£25,000, or at most £30,000 annually: excluding of course the expenditure
connected with our own military and navy, and the repair of the
fortifications, which latter expense ought to be much less than at
Gibraltar, from the multitude and low wages of the labourers in Malta,
and from the softness and admirable quality of the stone. Indeed much
more might safely be promised on the assumption that a wise and generous
system of policy were adopted and persevered in. The monopoly of the
Maltese corn-trade by the Government formed an exception to a general
rule, and by a strange, yet valid anomaly in the operations of political
economy, was not more necessary than advantageous to the inhabitants.
The chief reason is, that the produce of the island itself barely
suffices for one-fourth of its inhabitants, although fruits and
vegetables form so large a part of their nourishment. Meantime the
harbours of Malta, and its equidistance from Europe, Asia, and Africa,
gave it a vast and unnatural importance in the present relations of the
great European powers, and imposed on its government, whether native or
dependent, the necessity of considering the whole island as a single
garrison, the provisioning of which could not be trusted to the
casualties of ordinary commerce. What is actually necessary is seldom
injurious. Thus in Malta bread is better and cheaper on an average than
in Italy or the coast of Barbary; while a similar interference with the
corn-trade in Sicily impoverishes the inhabitants, and keeps the
agriculture in a state of barbarism. But the point in question is the
expense to Great Britain. Whether the monopoly be good or evil in
itself, it remains true, that in this established usage, and in the
gradual enclosure of the uncultivated district, such resources exist as
without the least oppression might render the civil government in Valetta
independent of the Treasury at home, finally taking upon itself even the
repair of the fortifications, and thus realise one instance of an
important possession that cost the country nothing.
But now the time arrived which threatened to frustrate the patriotism of
the Maltese themselves, and all the zealous efforts of their
disinterested friend. Soon after the war had for the first time become
indisputably just and necessary, the people at large and a majority of
independent senators, incapable, as it might seem, of translating their
fanatical anti-Jacobinism into a well-grounded, yet equally impassioned,
anti-Gallicanism, grew impatient for peace, or rather for a name, under
which the most terrific of all wars would be incessantly waged against
us. Our conduct was not much wiser than that of the weary traveller, who
having proceeded half way on his journey, procured a short rest for
himself by getting up behind a chaise which was going the contrary road.
In the strange treaty of Amiens, in which we neither recognised our
former relations with France nor with the other European powers, nor
formed any new ones, the compromise concerning Malta formed the prominent
feature; and its nominal re-delivery to the Order of St. John was
authorised, in the minds of the people, by Lord Nelson’s opinion of its
worthlessness to Great Britain in a political or naval view. It is a
melancholy fact, and one that must often sadden a reflective and
philanthropic mind, how little moral considerations weigh even with the
noblest nations, how vain are the strongest appeals to justice, humanity,
and national honour, unless when the public mind is under the immediate
influence of the cheerful or vehement passions, indignation or avaricious
hope. In the whole class of human infirmities there is none that make
such loud appeals to prudence, and yet so frequently outrages its
plainest dictates, as the spirit of fear. The worst cause conducted in
hope is an overmatch for the noblest managed by despondency; in both
cases, an unnatural conjunction that recalls the old fable of Love and
Death, taking each the arrows of the other by mistake. When islands that
had courted British protection in reliance upon British honour, are with
their inhabitants and proprietors abandoned to the resentment which we
had tempted them to provoke, what wonder, if the opinion becomes general,
that alike to England as to France, the fates and fortunes of other
nations are but the counters, with which the bloody game of war is
played; and that notwithstanding the great and acknowledged difference
between the two Governments during possession, yet the protection of
France is more desirable because it is more likely to endure? for what
the French take, they keep. Often both in Sicily and Malta have I heard
the case of Minorca referred to, where a considerable portion of the most
respectable gentry and merchants (no provision having been made for their
protection on the re-delivery of that island to Spain) expiated in
dungeons the warmth and forwardness of their predilection for Great
Britain.
It has been by some persons imagined, that Lord Nelson was considerably
influenced, in his public declaration concerning the value of Malta, by
ministerial flattery, and his own sense of the great serviceableness of
that opinion to the persons in office. This supposition is, however,
wholly false and groundless. His lordship’s opinion was indeed greatly
shaken afterwards, if not changed; but at that time he spoke in strictest
correspondence with his existing convictions. He said no more than he
had often previously declared to his private friends: it was the point on
which, after some amicable controversy, his lordship and Sir Alexander
Ball had “agreed to differ.” Though the opinion itself may have lost the
greatest part of its interest, and except for the historian is, as it
were, superannuated; yet the grounds and causes of it, as far as they
arose out of Lord Nelson’s particular character, and may perhaps tend to
re-enliven our recollection of a hero so deeply and justly beloved, will
for ever possess an interest of their own. In an essay, too, which
purports to be no more than a series of sketches and fragments, the
reader, it is hoped, will readily excuse an occasional digression, and a
more desultory style of narration than could be tolerated in a work of
regular biography.
Lord Nelson was an admiral every inch of him. He looked at everything,
not merely in its possible relations to the naval service in general, but
in its immediate bearings on his own squadron; to his officers, his men,
to the particular ships themselves, his affections were as strong and
ardent as those of a lover. Hence, though his temper was
constitutionally irritable and uneven, yet never was a commander so
enthusiastically loved by men of all ranks, from the captain of the fleet
to the youngest ship-boy. Hence, too, the unexampled harmony which
reigned in his fleet, year after year, under circumstances that might
well have undermined the patience of the best-balanced dispositions, much
more of men with the impetuous character of British sailors. Year after
year, the same dull duties of a wearisome blockade, of doubtful
policy—little, if any, opportunity of making prizes; and the few prizes,
which accident might throw in the way, of little or no value; and when at
last the occasion presented itself which would have compensated for all,
then a disappointment as sudden and unexpected as it was unjust and
cruel, and the cup dashed from their lips! Add to these trials the sense
of enterprises checked by feebleness and timidity elsewhere, not omitting
the tiresomeness of the Mediterranean sea, sky, and climate; and the
unjarring and cheerful spirit of affectionate brotherhood, which linked
together the hearts of that whole squadron, will appear not less
wonderful to us than admirable and affecting. When the resolution was
taken of commencing hostilities against Spain, before any intelligence
was sent to Lord Nelson, another admiral, with two or three ships of the
line, was sent into the Mediterranean, and stationed before Cadiz, for
the express purpose of intercepting the Spanish prizes. The admiral
despatched on this lucrative service gave no information to Lord Nelson
of his arrival in the same sea, and five weeks elapsed before his
lordship became acquainted with the circumstance. The prizes thus taken
were immense. A month or two sufficed to enrich the commander and
officers of this small and highly-favoured squadron; while to Nelson and
his fleet the sense of having done their duty, and the consciousness of
the glorious services which they had performed, were considered, it must
be presumed, as an abundant remuneration for all their toils and long
suffering! It was, indeed, an unexampled circumstance, that a small
squadron should be sent to the station which had been long occupied by a
large fleet, commanded by the darling of the navy, and the glory of the
British empire, to the station where this fleet had for years been
wearing away in the most barren, repulsive, and spirit-trying service, in
which the navy can be employed! and that this minor squadron should be
sent independently of, and without any communication with the commander
of the former fleet, for the express and solitary purpose of stepping
between it and the Spanish prizes, and as soon as this short and pleasant
service was performed, of bringing home the unshared booty with all
possible caution and despatch. The substantial advantages of naval
service were, perhaps, deemed of too gross a nature for men already
rewarded with the grateful affections of their own countrymen, and the
admiration of the whole world! They were to be awarded, therefore, on a
principle of compensation to a commander less rich in fame, and whose
laurels, though not scanty, were not yet sufficiently luxuriant to hide
the golden crown which is the appropriate ornament of victory in the
bloodless war of commercial capture! Of all the wounds which were ever
inflicted on Nelson’s feelings (and there were not a few), this was the
deepest—this rankled most! “I had thought” (said the gallant man, in a
letter written on the first feelings of the affront), “I fancied—but nay,
it must have been a dream, an idle dream—yet, I confess it, I did fancy,
that I had done my country service—and thus they use me. It was not
enough to have robbed me once before of my West India harvest—now they
have taken away the Spanish—and under what circumstances, and with what
pointed aggravations? Yet, if I know my own thoughts, it is not for
myself, or on my own account chiefly, that I feel the sting, and the
disappointment; no! it is for my brave officers; for my noble-minded
friends and comrades—such a gallant set of fellows! such a hand of
brothers! My heart swells at the thought of them!”
This strong attachment of the heroic admiral to his fleet, faithfully
repaid by an equal attachment on their part to their admiral, had no
little influence in attuning their hearts to each other; and when he
died, it seemed as if no man was a stranger to another; for all were made
acquaintances by the rights of a common anguish. In the fleet itself,
many a private quarrel was forgotten, no more to be remembered; many, who
had been alienated, became once more good friends; yea, many a one was
reconciled to his very enemy, and loved and (as it were) thanked him for
the bitterness of his grief, as if it had been an act of consolation to
himself in an intercourse of private sympathy. The tidings arrived at
Naples on the day that I returned to that city from Calabria; and never
can I forget the sorrow and consternation that lay on every countenance.
Even to this day there are times when I seem to see, as in a vision,
separate groups and individual faces of the picture. Numbers stopped and
shook hands with me because they had seen the tears on my cheek, and
conjectured that I was an Englishman; and several, as they held my hand,
burst themselves into tears. And though it may awake a smile, yet it
pleased and affected me, as a proof of the goodness of the human heart
struggling to exercise its kindness in spite of prejudices the most
obstinate, and eager to carry on its love and honour into the life beyond
life, that it was whispered about Naples, that Lord Nelson had become a
good Catholic before his death. The absurdity of the fiction is a sort
of measurement of the fond and affectionate esteem which had ripened the
pious wish of some kind individual, through all the gradations of
possibility and probability, into a confident assertion, believed and
affirmed by hundreds. The feelings of Great Britain on this awful event
have been described well and worthily by a living poet, who has happily
blended the passion and wild transitions of lyric song with the swell and
solemnity of epic narration.
“—Thou art fall’n! fall’n, in the lap
Of victory. To thy country thou cam’st back,
Thou, conqueror, to triumphal Albion cam’st
A corse! I saw before thy hearse pass on
The comrades of thy perils and renown.
The frequent tear upon their dauntless breasts
Fell. I beheld the pomp thick gathered round
The trophied car that bore thy graced remains
Through armed ranks, and a nation gazing on.
Bright glowed the sun, and not a cloud distained
Heaven’s arch of gold, but all was gloom beneath.
A holy and unutterable pang
Thrilled on the soul. Awe and mute anguish fell
On all.—Yet high the public bosom throbbed
With triumph. And if one, ’mid that vast pomp,
If but the voice of one had shouted forth
The name of NELSON, thou hadst past along,
Thou in thy hearse to burial past, as oft
Before the van of battle, proudly rode
Thy prow, down Britain’s line, shout after shout
Rending the air with triumph, ere thy hand
Had lanced the bolt of victory.”
SOTHEBY (_Saul_, p. 80).
I introduced this digression with an apology, yet have extended it so
much further than I had designed, that I must once more request my reader
to excuse me. It was to be expected (I have said) that Lord Nelson would
appreciate the isle of Malta from its relations to the British fleet on
the Mediterranean station. It was the fashion of the day to style Egypt
the key of India, and Malta the key of Egypt. Nelson saw the hollowness
of this metaphor; or if he only doubted its applicability in the former
instance, he was sure that it was false in the latter. Egypt might or
might not be the key of India, but Malta was certainly not the key of
Egypt. It was not intended to keep constantly two distinct fleets in
that sea; and the largest naval force at Malta would not supersede the
necessity of a squadron off Toulon. Malta does not lie in the direct
course from Toulon to Alexandria; and from the nature of the winds
(taking one time with another) the comparative length of the voyage to
the latter port will be found far less than a view of the map would
suggest, and in truth of little practical importance. If it were the
object of the French fleet to avoid Malta in its passage to Egypt, the
port-admiral at Valetta would in all probability receive his first
intelligence of its course from Minorca or the squadron off Toulon,
instead of communicating it. In what regards the refitting and
provisioning of the fleet, either on ordinary or extraordinary occasions,
Malta was as inconvenient as Minorca was advantageous, not only from its
distance (which yet was sufficient to render it almost useless in cases
of the most pressing necessity, as after a severe action or injuries of
tempest), but likewise from the extreme difficulty, if not
impracticability of leaving the harbour of Valetta with a NW. wind, which
often lasts for weeks together. In all these points his lordship’s
observations were perfectly just; and it must be conceded by all persons
acquainted with the situation and circumstances of Malta, that its
importance, as a British possession, if not exaggerated on the whole, was
unduly magnified in several important particulars. Thus Lord Minto, in a
speech delivered at a county meeting, and afterwards published, affirms,
that supposing (what no one could consider as unlikely to take place)
that the court of Naples should be compelled to act under the influence
of France, and that the Barbary powers were unfriendly to us, either in
consequence of French intrigues or from their own caprice and insolence,
there would not be a single port, harbour, bay, creek, or roadstead in
the whole Mediterranean, from which our men-of-war could obtain a single
ox or a hogshead of fresh water, unless Great Britain retained possession
of Malta. The noble speaker seems not to have been aware, that under the
circumstances supposed by him, Odessa too being closed against us by a
Russian war, the island of Malta itself would be no better than a vast
almshouse of 75,000 persons, exclusive of the British soldiery, all of
whom must be regularly supplied with corn and salt meat from Great
Britain or Ireland. The population of Malta and Gozo exceeds 100,000,
while the food of all kinds produced on the two islands would barely
suffice for one-fourth of that number. The deficit is procured by the
growth and spinning of cotton, for which corn could not be substituted
from the nature of the soil, or, were it attempted, would produce but a
small proportion of the quantity which the cotton raised on the same
fields and spun into thread, enables the Maltese to purchase, not to
mention that the substitution of grain for cotton would leave half of the
inhabitants without employment. As to live stock, it is quite out of the
question, if we except the pigs and goats, which perform the office of
scavengers in the streets of Valetta and the towns on the other side of
the Porto Grande.
Against these arguments Sir A. Ball placed the following considerations.
It had been long his conviction that the Mediterranean squadron should be
supplied by regular store-ships, the sole business of which should be
that of carriers for the fleet. This he recommended as by far the most
economic plan in the first instance. Secondly, beyond any other it would
secure a system and regularity in the arrival of supplies. And, lastly,
it would conduce to the discipline of the navy, and prevent both ships
and officers from being out of the way on any sudden emergency. If this
system were introduced, the objections to Malta, from its great distance,
&c., would have little force. On the other hand, the objections to
Minorca he deemed irremovable. The same disadvantages which attended the
getting out of the harbour of Valetta, applied to vessels getting into
Port Mahon; but while fifteen hundred or two thousand British troops
might be safely entrusted with the preservation of Malta, the troops for
the defence of Minorca must ever be in proportion to those which the
enemy may be supposed likely to send against it. It is so little
favoured by nature or by art, that the possessors stood merely on the
level with the invaders. _Cæteris paribus_, if there 12,000 of the enemy
landed, there must be an equal number to repel them; nor could the
garrison, or any part of it, be spared for any sudden emergency without
risk of losing the island. Previously to the battle of Marengo, the most
earnest representations were made to the governor and commander at
Minorca by the British admiral, who offered to take on himself the whole
responsibility of the measure, if he would permit the troops at Minorca
to join our allies. The governor felt himself compelled to refuse his
assent. Doubtless, he acted wisely, for responsibility is not
transferable. The fact is introduced in proof of the defenceless state
of Minorca, and its constant liability to attack. If the Austrian army
had stood in the same relation to eight or nine thousand British soldiers
at Malta, a single regiment would have precluded all alarms as to the
island itself, and the remainder have perhaps changed the destiny of
Europe. What might not, almost I would say, what must not eight thousand
Britons have accomplished at the battle of Marengo, nicely poised as the
fortunes of the two armies are now known to have been? Minorca, too, is
alone useful or desirable during a war, and on the supposition of a fleet
off Toulon. The advantages of Malta are permanent and national. As a
second Gibraltar it must tend to secure Gibraltar itself; for if by the
loss of that one place we could be excluded from the Mediterranean, it is
difficult to say what sacrifices of blood and treasure the enemy would
deem too high a price for its conquest. Whatever Malta may or may not be
respecting Egypt, its high importance to the independence of Sicily
cannot be doubted, or its advantages as a central station, for any
portion of our disposable force. Neither is the influence which it will
enable us to exert on the Barbary powers to be wholly neglected. I shall
only add, that during the plague at Gibraltar, Lord Nelson himself
acknowledged that he began to see the possession of Malta in a different
light.
Sir Alexander Ball looked forward to future contingencies as likely to
increase the value of Malta to Great Britain. He foresaw that the whole
of Italy would become a French province, and he knew that the French
Government had been long intriguing on the coast of Barbary. The Dey of
Algiers was believed to have accumulated a treasure of fifteen millions
sterling, and Buonaparte had actually duped him into a treaty, by which
the French were to be permitted to erect a fort on the very spot where
the ancient Hippo stood, the choice between which and the Hellespont, as
the site of New Rome, is said to have perplexed the judgment of
Constantine. To this he added an additional point of connection with
Russia, by means of Odessa, and on the supposition of a war in the
Baltic, a still more interesting relation to Turkey, and the Mores, and
the Greek islands. It had been repeatedly signified to the British
Government, that from the Morea and the countries adjacent, a
considerable supply of ship timber and naval stores might be obtained,
such as would at least greatly lessen the pressure of a Russian war. The
agents of France were in full activity in the Morea and the Greek
islands, the possession of which, by that Government, would augment the
naval resources of the French to a degree of which few are aware who have
not made the present state of commerce of the Greeks an object of
particular attention. In short, if the possession of Malta were
advantageous to England solely as a convenient watch-tower, as a centre
of intelligence, its importance would be undeniable.
Although these suggestions did not prevent the signing away of Malta at
the peace of Amiens, they doubtless were not without effect, when the
ambition of Buonaparte had given a full and final answer to the grand
question: can we remain at peace with France? I have likewise reason to
believe that Sir Alexander Ball, baffled, by exposing an insidious
proposal of the French Government, during the negotiations that preceded
the recommencement of the war—that the fortifications of Malta should be
entirely dismantled, and the island left to its inhabitants. Without
dwelling on the obvious inhumanity and flagitious injustice of exposing
the Maltese to certain pillage and slavery from their old and inveterate
enemies, the Moors, he showed that the plan would promote the interests
of Buonaparte even more than his actual possession of the island, which
France had no possible interest in desiring, except as the means of
keeping it out of the hands of Great Britain.
But Sir Alexander Ball is no more. The writer still clings to the hope
that he may yet be able to record his good deeds more fully and
regularly; that then, with a sense of comfort, not without a subdued
exultation, he may raise heavenward from his honoured tomb the glistening
eye of an humble, but ever grateful Friend.