influence of our own sovereign's domestic character in counteracting
them. But in Malta there were circumstances which rendered such an
example peculiarly requisite and beneficent. The very existence for
so many generations of an order of lay celibates in that island, who
abandoned even the outward shows of an adherence to their vow of
chastity, must have had pernicious effects on the morals of the
inhabitants. But when it is considered too that the Knights of Malta
had been for the last fifty years or more a set of useless idlers,
generally illiterate, for they thought literature no part of a
soldier's excellence; and yet effeminate, for they were soldiers in
name only; when it is considered that they were, moreover, all of
them aliens, who looked upon themselves not merely as of a superior
rank to the native nobles, but as beings of a different race (I had
almost said species) from the Maltese collectively; and finally, that
these men possessed exclusively the government of the island; it may
be safely concluded that they were little better than a perpetual
influenza, relaxing and diseasing the hearts of all the families
within their sphere of influence. Hence the peasantry, who
fortunately were below their reach, notwithstanding the more than
childish ignorance in which they were kept by their priests, yet
compared with the middle and higher classes, were both in mind and
body as ordinary men compared with dwarfs. Every respectable family
had some one knight for their patron, as a matter of course; and to
him the honour of a sister or a daughter was sacrificed, equally as a
matter of course. But why should I thus disguise the truth? Alas!
in nine instances out of ten, this patron was the common paramour of
every female in the family. Were I composing a state memorial I
should abstain from all allusion to moral good or evil, as not having
now first to learn, that with diplomatists and with practical
statesmen of every denomination, it would preclude all attention to