"CONSTITUTION IN A MAN-OF-WAR" 2g

is true that, as is pretty nearly the case in Malta, the maintenance of the eager feeling of attachment to the British connection of the inhabitants was essential to our possession. But, though this was probably not at the time recognised at home, the inhabitants were much more inclined to accept a military than a civil dictatorship. The danger of French attack was imminent, and they wanted security. Though there were certain semblances of representative government existing in Corsica, it is truly said by Sir Gilbert's biographer that "Nothing could be more democratic than the forms, nothing more autocratic than the result. Neither unnaturally nor unwisely in the existing condition of their country, the Corsicans used their rights to invest with supreme authority the man who had won their aflfections and their confidence, and except when asked to lay down their arms, or to take up their tools, their submission was complete/'1

In other words, it was Paolfs influence alone which had induced them to offer the crown of their island to George III. There was only one possible means of maintaining their loyalty to the King, and that was by always carrying Paoli ostentatiously along with the Government in whatever it did. In the earliest conversation between Paoli and Sir Gilbert as here recorded, it is evident that what was really rankling in Paoli's mind was this, that neither Hood nor Sir Gilbert would recognise the fact that the Corsicans had chosen to invest him, Paoli, with despotic powers, and that he had a right to speak in their name. I hope the reader will study the point and judge. The one thing that seemed needful to Sir Gilbert was "to assimilate the constitutions of Great

1 "Life of Sir Gilbert Elliot," vol. ii. p. 262.