* * * * *
No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the Maltese when the island was surrendered to us. There was not a family in it in which a wife or a daughter was not a kept mistress. A marquis of ancient family applied to Sir Alexander Ball to be appointed his valet. "My valet!" said Ball, "what can you mean, Sir?" The marquis said, he hoped he should then have had the honour of presenting petitions to his Excellency. "Oh, that is it, is it!" said Sir Alexander: "my valet, Sir, brushes my clothes, and brings them to me. If he dared to meddle with matters of public business, I should kick him down stairs."
In short, Malta was an Augean stable, and Ball had all the inclination to be a Hercules.[1] His task was most difficult, although his qualifications were most remarkable. I remember an English officer of very high rank soliciting him for the renewal of a pension to an abandoned woman who had been notoriously treacherous to us. That officer had promised the woman as a matter of course—she having sacrificed her daughter to him. Ball was determined, as far as he could, to prevent Malta from being made a nest of home patronage. He considered, as was the fact, that there was a contract between England and the Maltese. Hence the government at home, especially Dundas, disliked him, and never allowed him any other title than that of Civil Commissioner. We have, I believe, nearly succeeded in alienating the hearts of the inhabitants from us. Every officer in the island ought to be a Maltese, except those belonging to the immediate executive: 100_l_. per annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt carriage, will satisfy him where an Englishman must have 2000_l_.
[Footnote 1: I refer the reader to the five concluding essays of the third volume of the "Friend," as a specimen of what Mr. C. might have done as a biographer if an irresistible instinct had not devoted him to profounder labours. As a sketch—and it pretends to nothing more—is there any thing more perfect in our literature than the monument raised in those essays to the memory of Sir Alexander Ball?—and there are some touches added to the character of Nelson, which the reader, even of Southey's matchless Life of our hero, will find both new and interesting.—ED.]
May 1. 1834.
CAMBRIDGE PETITION TO ADMIT DISSENTERS.
There are, to my grief, the names of some men to the Cambridge petition for admission of the Dissenters to the University, whose cheeks I think must have burned with shame at the degrading patronage and befouling eulogies of the democratic press, and at seeing themselves used as the tools of the open and rancorous enemies of the church. How miserable to be held up for the purpose of inflicting insult upon men, whose worth and ability and sincerity you well know,—and this by a faction banded together like obscene dogs and cats and serpents, against a church which you profoundly revere! The time—the time—the occasion and the motive ought to have been argument enough, that even if the measure were right or harmless in itself, not now, nor with such as these, was it to be effected!
May 3. 1834.
CORN LAWS.
Those who argue that England may safely depend upon a supply of foreign corn, if it grow none or an insufficient quantity of its own, forget that they are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the mere luxuries or comforts of society. Is it not certain that the price of corn abroad will be raised upon us as soon as it is once known that we must buy?—and when that fact is known, in what sort of a situation shall we be? Besides this, the argument supposes that agriculture is not a positive good to the nation, taken in and by itself, as a mode of existence for the people, which supposition is false and pernicious; and if we are to become a great horde of manufacturers, shall we not, even more than at present, excite the ill will of all the manufacturers of other nations? It has been already shown, in evidence which is before all the world, that some of our manufacturers have acted upon the accursed principle of deliberately injuring foreign manufactures, if they can, even to the ultimate disgrace of the country and loss to themselves.