exaggerated on the whole, was unduly magnified in several important
particulars. Thus Lord Minto, in a speech delivered at a county
meeting, and afterwards published, affirms, that supposing (what no
one could consider as unlikely to take place) that the court of
Naples should be compelled to act under the influence of France, and
that the Barbary powers were unfriendly to us, either in consequence
of French intrigues or from their own caprice and insolence, there
would not be a single port, harbour, bay, creek, or roadstead in the
whole Mediterranean, from which our men-of-war could obtain a single
ox or a hogshead of fresh water, unless Great Britain retained
possession of Malta. The noble speaker seems not to have been aware,
that under the circumstances supposed by him, Odessa too being closed
against us by a Russian war, the island of Malta itself would be no
better than a vast almshouse of 75,000 persons, exclusive of the
British soldiery, all of whom must be regularly supplied with corn
and salt meat from Great Britain or Ireland. The population of Malta
and Gozo exceeds 100,000, while the food of all kinds produced on the
two islands would barely suffice for one-fourth of that number. The
deficit is procured by the growth and spinning of cotton, for which
corn could not be substituted from the nature of the soil, or, were
it attempted, would produce but a small proportion of the quantity
which the cotton raised on the same fields and spun into thread,
enables the Maltese to purchase, not to mention that the substitution
of grain for cotton would leave half of the inhabitants without
employment. As to live stock, it is quite out of the question, if we
except the pigs and goats, which perform the office of scavengers in
the streets of Valetta and the towns on the other side of the Porto
Grande.

Against these arguments Sir A. Ball placed the following