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 Valetta independent
of the Treasury at home, finally taking upon itself even the repair
of the fortifications, and thus realise one instance of an important
possession that cost the country nothing.

But now the time arrived which threatened to 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 wars 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
journey, procured a short rest for himself by getting up behind a
chaise which was going the contrary road. In the strange treaty of