THE FRIEND. No. 27, THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1810. SKETCHES AND FRAGMENTS OF THE LIFE AND (Continued.) CAPTAIN BALL'S services in Malta were honoured with his Sovereign's approbation, transmitted in a letter from the Secretary Dundas, and with a Baronetcy. A thousand pounds were at the same time directed to be paid him from the Maltese Treasury. The best and most appropriate addition to the applause of his King and his Country, Sir Alexander Ball found in the feelings and faithful affection of the Maltese. The enthusiasm manifested in reverential gestures and shouts of triumph whenever their Friend and Deliverer appeared in public, was the utterance of a deep feeling, and in no wise the mere ebullition of animal sensibility which is not indeed a part of the Maltese character. The truth of this observation will not be doubted by any person, who has witnessed the religious Processions I scarce know whether it be worth mentioning, that this Sum remained undemanded till the Spring of the year 1805 at which time the Writer of these Sketches, during an examination of the Treasury Accounts, observed the circumstance and noticed it to the Governor, who had suffered it to escape altogether from his memory, for the latter years at least. The value attached to the Present by the Receiver, must have depended on his construction of its purpose and meaning: for, in a pecuniary point of view, the sum was not a moiety of what Sir Alexander had expended from his private fortune during the blockade. His immediate appointment to the Government of the Island, so earnestly prayed for by the Maltese, would doubtless have furnished a less questionable proof that his services were as highly esti mated by the Ministry as they were graciously accepted by his Sovereign. But this was withheld as long as it remained possible to doubt, whether great talents, joined to local experience, and the confidence and affection of the Inhabitants, might not be dispensed with in the Person entrusted with that Government. in honour of the favourite Saints, both at Vallette and at Messina or Palermo, and who must have been struck with the contrast between the apparent apathy, or at least the perfect sobriety, of the Maltese, and the fanatical agitations of the Sicilian Populace. Among the latter each Man's soul seems hardly containable in his body, like a prisoner, whose Jail is on fire, flying madly from one barred outlet to another; while the former might suggest the suspicion, that their bodies were on the point of sinking into the same slumber with their understandings. But their political Deliverance was a thing that came home to their hearts, and intertwined with their most empassioned recollections, personal and patriotic. To Sir Alexander Ball exclusively (with what justice it is not for me to decide) the Maltese themselves attributed their emancipation: on him too they rested their hopes of the future. Whenever he appeared in Vailette, the Passengers on each side, through the whole length of the street stopped, and remained uncovered till he had passed: the very clamours of the Market Place were hushed at his entrance, and then exchanged for shouts of joy and welcome. Even after the lapse of years he never appeared in any one of their Casals, which did not lie in the direct road between Vallette and St. Antonio, his Summer Residence, but the Women and Children, with such of the Men who were not at labour in their fields, fell into ranks, and followed, or preceded him, singing the Maltese Song which had been made in his honour, and which was scarcely less familiar to the Inhabitants of Malta and Goza, than God save the King to Britons. When he went to the Gate through the City, the young Men refrained talking; and the Aged arose and stood up. When the ear heard, then it blessed him; and when the eye saw him, it gave witness to him: because he delivered the Poor that cried, and the Fatherless, and those that had none to help them. The blessing of them that were ready to perish came upon him; and he caused the Widow's heart to sing for joy. * I was the Governor's custom to visit every Casal throughout the Island once, if not twice, in the course of each Summer; and during my residence there, had the honour of being his constant, and most often, his only Companion in these rides; to which I owe some of the happiest and most instruc e hours of my life. In the poorest House of the most distant Casal two rude dius were sure to be found: A Picture of the Virgin. and Child; and a Utrait of Sir Alexander Ball. These feelings were afterwards amply justified by his ad ministration of the Government; and the very excesses of their gratitude on their first deliverance, proved in the end, only to be acknowledgements antedated. For some time. after the departure of the French, the distress was so general and so severe, that a large proportion of the lower classes became Mendicants, and one of the greatest thoroughfares of Vallette still retains the name of the "Nix Mangiare Stairs," from the crowd who used there to assail the ears of the Passengers with cries of "uix mangiare," or nothing to eat," the former word nix, being the low German pronunciation of nichts, nothing. By what means it was introduced into Malta, I know not; but it became the common vehicle both of solicitation and refusal, the Maltese thinking it an English word, and the English supposing it to be Maltese. I often felt it as a pleasing remembrancer of the evil day gone by, when a tribe of little children, quite naked, as is the custom of that climate, and each with a pair of gold ear-rings in his ears, and all fat and beautifully proportioned, would suddenly leave their play, and, looking round to see that their Parents were not in sight," change their shouts of merriment for "nix mangiare! awkwardly imitating the plaintive tones of mendicancy; while the white teeth in their little swarthy faces. gave a splendor to the happy and confessing laugh, with which they received the good-humoured rebuke or refusal, and ran back to their former sport. In the interim between the capitulation of the French Garrison and Sir Alexander Ball's appointment as his Majesty's civil Commissioner for Malta, his zeal for the Maltese was neither suspended nor 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 it's existing state; shewed 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 indissolu ble bond of connection. I have some reason likewise for believing, that his wise and patriotic representations prevented Malta from being made the seat and pretext for a numerous civil establishment, in hapless imitation of Cor sica, 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 a year, and to reside in England, while one of his Countrymen was to be the Lieutenant Governor at £5,000 a year; to which were to be added a long et cetera of other Offices and Places of propor tional 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 it's own-such a stately and wide-branching Tree of Patronage, though delightful to the Individuals who are to pluck it's golden Apples, sheds, like the Manchineel, unwholesome and corrosive dews on the multitude who are to rest beneath it's 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 it's utter inutility, in the case of Malta. With the exception of the Governor, and of the Public Secretary, both of whom undoubtedly should be natives of Great Britain, and appointed by the British Government, there was no civil Office that could be of the remotest advantage to the Island which was not already filled by the Natives, and the functions of which none could perform so well as they. The number of Inhabitants (he would state) was prodigious compared with the extent of the Island, though from the fear of the Moors one fourth of it's surface remained unpeopled and uncultivated. To deprive therefore the middle and lower Classes of such Places, as they had been accustomed to hold, would be cruel: while the Places held by the Nobility, were, for the greater part, such as none but Natives could perform the duties of. By any innova tion we should affront the higher classes and alienate the affections of all, not only without any imaginable advautage but with the certainty of great loss. Were English en to be employed, the salaries must be çncreased fourfold, and would yet be scarcely worth acceptance; and in higher offices, such as those of the civil and criminal judges, the Salaries must be augmented more than ten-fold. For, greatly to the credit of their patriotism and moral character, the Maltese Gentry sought these Places as honourable distinctions, which endeared them to their Fellow-countrymen, and at the same time rendered the yoke of the Order. somewhat less grievous and galling. With the exception of the Maltese Secretary, whose situation was one of incessant labour, and who at the same time performed the duties of Law Counsellor to the Government, the highest salaries scarcely exceeded £100. a year, and were barely sufficient to defray the encreased expences of the Functionaries for an additional equipage, or one of more imposing appearance. Besides, it was of importance that the Person placed at the head of that Government, should be looked up to by the Natives, and possess the means of distinguishing and rewarding those who had been most faithful and zealous in their attachment to Great Britain, and hostile to their former Tyrants. The number of the employments to be conferred would give considerable influence to his Majesty's civil Representative, while the trifling amount of the emolument attached to each, precluded all temptation of abusing it. Sir Alexander Ball would likewise, it is probable, urge, that the commercial advantages of Malta, which were most intelligible to the English Public, and best fitted to render our retention of the Island popular, must necessarily be of very slow growth, though finally they would become great, and of an extent not to be calculated. For this reason, therefore, it was highly desirable, that the Possession should be and appear to be, at least inexpensive. After the British Government had made one advance for a stock of Corn sufficient to place the Island a year beforehand, the sum total drawn from Great Britain need not exceed 25, or at most £30,000. annually; excluding of course the expenditure connected with our own Military and Navy, and the repair of the Fortifications, which latter expence ought to be much less than at Gibraltar, from the multitude and low wages of the Labourers in Malta, and from the softness and admirable quality of the stone. Indeed much more might safely be promised on the assumption, that a wise and generous system of policy were adopted and persevered in. The monopoly of the Maltese corn Trade by the Government, formed an exception to a general rule, and by a strange, yet valid, anomaly in |