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