single regiment would have precluded all alarms as to the island
itself, and the remainder have perhaps changed the destiny of Europe.
What might not, almost I would say, what must not eight thousand
Britons have accomplished at the battle of Marengo, nicely poised as
the fortunes of the two armies are now known to have been? Minorca,
too, is alone useful or desirable during a war, and on the
supposition of a fleet off Toulon. The advantages of Malta are
permanent and national. As a second Gibraltar it must tend to secure
Gibraltar itself; for if by the loss of that one place we could be
excluded from the Mediterranean, it is difficult to say what
sacrifices of blood and treasure the enemy would deem too high a
price for its conquest. Whatever Malta may or may not be respecting
Egypt, its high importance to the independence of Sicily cannot be
doubted, or its advantages as a central station, for any portion of
our disposable force. Neither is the influence which it will enable
us to exert on the Barbary powers to be wholly neglected. I shall
only add, that during the plague at Gibraltar, Lord Nelson himself
acknowledged that he began to see the possession of Malta in a
different light.

Sir Alexander Ball looked forward to future contingencies as likely
to increase the value of Malta to Great Britain. He foresaw that the
whole of Italy would become a French province, and he knew that the
French Government had been long intriguing on the coast of Barbary.
The Dey of Algiers was believed to have accumulated a treasure of
fifteen millions sterling, and Buonaparte had actually duped him into
a treaty, by which the French were to be permitted to erect a fort on
the very spot where the ancient Hippo stood, the choice between which
and the Hellespont, as the site of New Rome, is said to have
perplexed the judgment of Constantine. To this he added an