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 pounds a year, and to reside in
England, while one of his countrymen was to be the lieutenant-
governor at 5,000 pounds 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