once has the latter roused my indignation in the reported speeches of the House of Commons; and as to the former, I need only state that in Rees's Cyclope dia 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 preeminently—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 was 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 pro

lar 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 pas-ceed to avow my sentiments on this capitulation, by sive, 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 enclosed 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 most confidential agents. He had already given splendid proofs that he could out-fight them; but here, and in his after diplomatic intercourse previous to the recommencement of the war, he likewise out-witted 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 harbor 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 Vallette, 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

which Malta was delivered up to his Britannic Majesty and allies, without the least mention made of the Maltese. With a warmth honorable 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 representatives, 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 remained 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 be ing more numerous than they had been for the greater part of the two years) could not possibly have remained before the fortifications of Vallette, 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 unprin

CAPTAIN BALL's services in Malta were honored with his sovereign's approbation, transmitted in aletter from the Secretary Dundas, and with a baronetcy. A thousand pounds were at the same time

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 no wise 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 honor of the favorite saints, both at Vallette 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 jail 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 Vallette, the passengers on each side, through the whole length of the street, stopped and remained un

cipled, 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 pro-directed to be paid him from the Maltese treasury. prietor? 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 of tener said than answered, that the main difference between the 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 over-ruled: and I dare affirm, from my own experience in the Mediterranean, that our conduct in this instance added to the im-covered till he had passed: the very clamors of the pression 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?"

ESSAY VI.

The way of ancient ordnance, though it winds,
Is yet no devious way. Straight forward goes
The lightning's path; and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.
My son the road, the human being travels,
That on which Blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines,
Honoring the holy bounds of property!
-There exists

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

*I scarce know whether it be worth mentioning, that this sum remained undemanded till the spring of the year 1805: at which time the writer of these sketches, during an examination of the treasury accounts, observed the circumstance and noticed it to the Governor, who had suffered it to escape altogether from his memory, for the latter years at least. The value attached to the present by the receiver, must have depended on his construction of its purpose and meaning: for in a pecuniary point of view, the sum was not a moiety of what Sir Alexander had expended from his private fortune during the blockade. His immediate appointment to the government of the island, so earnestly prayed for by the Maltese, would doubtless have furnished a less questionable proof that his services were as highly estimated by the ministry as they were graciously accepted by his sovereign. But this was withheld as long as it remained possible to doubt, whether great talents, joined to local experience, and the confidence and affection of the inhabitants, might not be dis

pensed with in the person entrusted with that government. Crimen ingrati animi quod magnis Ingeniis haud raro objicitur, sæpius nil aliud est quam perspicacia quædam in causam beneficii collati.See WALLENSTEIN, Part I.

It was the Governor's custom to visit every casal throughout the island once, if not twice, in the course of each summer; and during my residence there, I had the honor of being his constant, and most often, his only companion, in these rides; to which I owe some of the happiest and

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 im-time rendered the yoke of the order somewhat less mense extent to which it might be carried, and the hollowness of the opinion, that this trade was at tached to the south of France by any natural or indissoluble bond of connection. I have some reason

portance 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.

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 war 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 jour ney, 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 recognized our former relations with France or 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 authorized in the mind 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 honor, 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 makes 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 despondence: 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 honor, 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 hav. ing 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.

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 before-hand, the sum total drawn from Great Britain need not exceed 25, or at most 30,000l. annually; excluding of course the expenditure connected with her 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 laborers 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 corntrade 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 harbors of Malta, and its equi-distance 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 Vallette independent of the Treasury at home, finally taking upon itself even the repair of the fortifications, and thus realize one instance of an important possession that cost the country nothing. But now the time arrived, which threatened to groundless. His lordship's opinion was indeed greatly

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