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 Encyclopaedia 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