A SAILOR'S FORTUNE - ESSAY V

Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit

by Samuel T. Coleridge

A SAILOR'S FORTUNE - ESSAY V, CONFESSIONS OF AN INQUIRING SPIRIT by Samuel T. Coleridge
An eText from LiteratureClassics.com.

Please see the eText readme for important copyright information (available from the options menu above if you are browsing online or as a separate file in the archive if you are browsing offline.)


- Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be call'd upon to face
Same awful moment, to which Heaven has join'd
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a lover, is attired
With sudden brightness like a man inspired;
And through the heat of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
WORDSWORTH.

An accessibility to the sentiments of others on subjects of
importance often accompanies feeble minds, yet it is not the less a
true and constituent part of practical greatness, when it exists
wholly free from that passiveness to impression which renders counsel
itself injurious to certain characters, and from that weakness of
heart which, in the literal sense of the word, is always craving
advice. Exempt from all such imperfections, say rather in perfect
harmony with the excellences that preclude them, this openness to the
influxes of good sense and information, from whatever quarter they
might come, equally characterised both Lord Nelson and Sir Alexander
Ball, though each displayed it in the way best suited to his natural
temper. The former with easy hand collected, as it passed by him,
whatever could add to his own stores, appropriated what he could
assimilate, and levied subsidies of knowledge from all the accidents
of social life and familiar intercourse. Even at the jovial board,
and in the height of unrestrained merriment, a casual suggestion,
that flashed a new light on his mind, changed the boon companion into
the hero and the man of genius; and with the most graceful transition
he would make his company as serious as himself. When the taper of
his genius seemed extinguished, it was still surrounded by an
inflammable atmosphere of its own, and rekindled at the first
approach of light, and not seldom at a distance which made it seem to
flame up self-revived. In Sir Alexander Ball, the same excellence
was more an affair of system; and he would listen, even to weak men,
with a patience, which, in so careful an economist of time, always
demanded my admiration, and not seldom excited my wonder. It was one
of his maxims, that a man may suggest what he cannot give; adding,
that a wild or silly plan had more than once, from the vivid sense or
distinct perception of its folly, occasioned him to see what ought to
be done in a new light, or with a clearer insight. There is, indeed,
a hopeless sterility, a mere negation of sense and thought, which,
suggesting neither difference nor contrast, cannot even furnish hints
for recollection. But on the other hand, there are minds so
whimsically constituted, that they may sometimes be profitably
interpreted by contraries, a process of which the great Tycho Brahe
is said to have availed himself in the case of the little Lackwit,
who used to sit and mutter at his feet while he was studying. A mind
of this sort we may compare to a magnetic needle, the poles of which
have been suddenly reversed by a flash of lightning, or other more
obscure accident of nature. It may be safely concluded, that to
those whose judgment or information he respected, Sir Alexander Ball
did not content himself with giving access and attention. No! he
seldom failed of consulting them whenever the subject permitted any
disclosure; and where secrecy was necessary, he well knew how to
acquire their opinion without exciting even a conjecture concerning
his immediate object.

Yet, with all this readiness of attention, and with all this zeal in
collecting the sentiments of the well informed, never was a man more
completely uninfluenced by authority than Sir Alexander Ball, never
one who sought less to tranquillise his own doubts by the mere
suffrage and coincidence of others. The ablest suggestions had no
conclusive weight with him, till he had abstracted the opinion from
its author, till he had reduced it into a part of his own mind. The
thoughts of others were always acceptable, as affording him at least
a chance of adding to his materials for reflection; but they never
directed his judgment, much less superseded it. He even made a point
of guarding against additional confidence in the suggestions of his
own mind, from finding that a person of talents had formed the same
conviction; unless the person, at the same time, furnished some new
argument, or had arrived at the same conclusion by a different road.
On the latter circumstance he set an especial value, and, I may
almost say, courted the company and conversation of those whose
pursuits had least resembled his own, if he thought them men of clear
and comprehensive faculties. During the period of our intimacy,
scarcely a week passed in which he did not desire me to think on some
particular subject, and to give him the result in writing. Most
frequently, by the time I had fulfilled his request he would have
written down his own thoughts; and then, with the true simplicity of
a great mind, as free from ostentation as it was above jealousy, he
would collate the two papers in my presence, and never expressed more
pleasure than in the few instances in which I had happened to light
on all the arguments and points of view which had occurred to
himself, with some additional reasons which had escaped him. A
single new argument delighted him more than the most perfect
coincidence, unless, as before stated, the train of thought had been
very different from his own, and yet just and logical. He had one
quality of mind, which I have heard attributed to the late Mr. Fox,
that of deriving a keen pleasure from clear and powerful reasoning
for its own sake--a quality in the intellect which is nearly
connected with veracity and a love of justice in the moral character.

Valuing in others merits which he himself possessed, Sir Alexander
Ball felt no jealous apprehension of great talent. Unlike those
vulgar functionaries, whose place is too big for them, a truth which
they attempt to disguise from themselves, and yet feel, he was under
no necessity of arming himself against the natural superiority of
genius by factitious contempt and an industrious association of
extravagance and impracticability, with every deviation from the
ordinary routine; as the geographers in the middle ages used to
designate on their meagre maps the greater part of the world as
deserts or wildernesses, inhabited by griffins and chimaeras.
Competent to weigh each system or project by its own arguments, he
did not need these preventive charms and cautionary amulets against
delusion. He endeavoured to make talent instrumental to his purposes
in whatever shape it appeared, and with whatever imperfections it
might be accompanied; but wherever talent was blended with moral
worth, he sought it out, loved and cherished it. If it had pleased
Providence to preserve his life, and to place him on the same course
on which Nelson ran his race of glory, there are two points in which
Sir Alexander Ball would most closely have resembled his illustrious
friend. The first is, that in his enterprises and engagements he
would have thought nothing done, till all had been done that was
possible:-


Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.


The second, that he would have called forth all the talent and virtue
that existed within his sphere of influence, and created a band of
heroes, a gradation of officers, strong in head and strong in heart,
worthy to have been his companions and his successors in fame and
public usefulness.

Never was greater discernment shown in the selection of a fit agent,
than when Sir Alexander Ball was stationed off the coast of Malta to
intercept the supplies destined for the French garrison, and to watch
the movements of the French commanders, and those of the inhabitants
who had been so basely betrayed into their power. Encouraged by the
well-timed promises of the English captain, the Maltese rose through
all their casals (or country towns) and themselves commenced the work
of their emancipation, by storming the citadel at Civita Vecchia, the
ancient metropolis of Malta, and the central height of the island.
Without discipline, without a military leader, and almost without
arms, these brave peasants succeeded, and destroyed the French
garrison by throwing them over the battlements into the trench of the
citadel. In the course of this blockade, and of the tedious siege of
Valetta, Sir Alexander Ball displayed all that strength of character,
that variety and versatility of talent, and that sagacity, derived in
part from habitual circumspection, but which, when the occasion
demanded it, appeared intuitive and like an instinct; at the union of
which, in the same man, one of our oldest naval commanders once told
me, "he could never exhaust his wonder." The citizens of Valetta
were fond of relating their astonishment, and that of the French, at
Captain Ball's ship wintering at anchor out of the reach of the guns,
in a depth of fathom unexampled, on the assured impracticability of
which the garrison had rested their main hope of regular supplies.
Nor can I forget, or remember without some portion of my original
feeling, the solemn enthusiasm with which a venerable old man,
belonging to one of the distant casals, showed me the sea coombe,
where their father Ball (for so they commonly called him) first
landed, and afterwards pointed out the very place on which he first
stepped on their island; while the countenances of his townsmen, who
accompanied him, gave lively proofs that the old man's enthusiasm was
the representative of the common feeling.

There is no reason to suppose that Sir Alexander Ball was at any time
chargeable with that weakness so frequent in Englishmen, and so
injurious to our interests abroad, of despising the inhabitants of
other countries, of losing all their good qualities in their vices,
of making no allowance for those vices, from their religious or
political impediments, and still more of mistaking for vices a mere
difference of manners and customs. But if ever he had any of this
erroneous feeling, he completely freed himself from it by living
among the Maltese during their arduous trials, as long as the French
continued masters of their capital. He witnessed their virtues, and
learnt to understand in what various shapes and even disguises the
valuable parts of human nature may exist. In many individuals, whose
littleness and meanness in the common intercourse of life would have
stamped them at once as contemptible and worthless, with ordinary
Englishmen, he had found such virtues of disinterested patriotism,
fortitude, and self-denial, as would have done honour to an ancient
Roman.

There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly
feeling, very different even from that which is the most like it, the
character of a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in the rest of
Europe. This feeling probably originated in the fortunate
circumstance, that the titles of our English nobility follow the law
of their property, and are inherited by the eldest sons only. From
this source under the influences of our constitution, and of our
astonishing trade, it has diffused itself in different modifications
through the whole country. The uniformity of our dress among all
classes above that of the day labourer, while it has authorised all
classes to assume the appearance of gentlemen, has at the same time
inspired the wish to conform their manners, and still more their
ordinary actions in social intercourse, to their notions of the
gentlemanly, the most commonly received attribute of which character
is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other hand, the
encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned, and
favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any
cognisable marks of distinction, have rendered each class more
reserved and jealous in their general communion, and far more than
our climate, or natural temper, have caused that haughtiness and
reserve in our outward demeanour, which is so generally complained of
among foreigners. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of this
gentlemanly feeling: I respect it under all its forms and varieties,
from the House of Commons to the gentleman in the shilling gallery.
It is always the ornament of virtue, and oftentimes a support; but it
is a wretched substitute for it. Its worth, as a moral good, is by
no means in proportion to its value, as a social advantage. These
observations are not irrelevant; for to the want of reflection, that
this diffusion of gentlemanly feeling among us is not the growth of
our moral excellence, but the effect of various accidental advantages
peculiar to England; to our not considering that it is unreasonable
and uncharitable to expect the same consequences, where the same
causes have not existed to produce them; and, lastly, to our
proneness to regard the absence of this character (which, as I have
before said, does, for the greater part, and, in the common
apprehension, consist in a certain frankness and generosity in the
detail of action) as decisive against the sum total of personal or
national worth; we must, I am convinced, attribute a large portion of
that conduct, which in many instances has left the inhabitants of
countries conquered or appropriated by Great Britain, doubtful
whether the various solid advantages which they derived from our
protection and just government, were not bought dearly by the wounds
inflicted on their feelings and prejudices by the contemptuous and
insolent demeanour of the English as individuals. The reader who
bears this remark in mind, will meet, in the course of this
narration, more than one passage that will serve as its comment and
illustration.

It was, I know, a general opinion among the English in the
Mediterranean, that Sir Alexander Ball thought too well of the
Maltese, and did not share in the enthusiasm of Britons concerning
their own superiority. To the former part of the charge I shall only
reply at present, that a more venial, and almost desirable fault, can
scarcely be attributed to a governor, than that of a strong
attachment to the people whom he was sent to govern. The latter part
of the charge is false, if we are to understand by it, that he did
not think his countrymen superior on the whole to the other nations
of Europe; but it is true, as far as relates to his belief, that the
English thought themselves still better than they are; that they
dwelt on and exaggerated their national virtues, and weighed them by
the opposite vices of foreigners, instead of the virtues which those
foreigners possessed and they themselves wanted. Above all, as
statesmen, we must consider qualities by their practical uses. Thus,
he entertained no doubt that the English were superior to all others
in the kind and the degree of their courage, which is marked by far
greater enthusiasm than the courage of the Germans and northern
nations, and by a far greater steadiness and self-subsistency than
that of the French. It is more closely connected with the character
of the individual. The courage of an English army (he used to say)
is the sum total of the courage which the individual soldiers bring
with them to it, rather than of that which they derive from it. This
remark of Sir Alexander's was forcibly recalled to my mind when I was
at Naples. A Russian and an English regiment were drawn up together
in the same square: "See," said a Neapolitan to me, who had mistaken
me for one of his countrymen, "there is but one face in that whole
regiment, while in that" (pointing to the English) "every soldier has
a face of his own." On the other hand, there are qualities scarcely
less requisite to the completion of the military character, in which
Sir A. did not hesitate to think the English inferior to the
continental nations; as for instance, both in the power and the
disposition to endure privations; in the friendly temper necessary,
when troops of different nations are to act in concert; in their
obedience to the regulations of their commanding officers, respecting
their treatment of the inhabitants of the countries through which
they are marching, as well as in many other points, not immediately
connected with their conduct in the field: and, above all, in
sobriety and temperance. During the siege of Valetta, especially
during the sore distress to which the besiegers were for some time
exposed from the failure of provision, Sir Alexander Ball had an
ample opportunity of observing and weighing the separate merits and
demerits of the native and of the English troops; and surely since
the publication of Sir John Moore's campaign, there can be no just
offence taken, though I should say, that before the walls of Valetta,
as well as in the plains of Galicia, an indignant commander might,
with too great propriety, have addressed the English soldiery in the
words of an old dramatist -


Will you still owe your virtues to your bellies?
And only then think nobly when y'are full?
Doth fodder keep you honest? Are you bad
When out of flesh? And think you't an excuse
Of vile and ignominious actions, that
Y' are lean and out of liking?
CARTWRIGHT'S Love's Convert.

From the first insurrectionary movement to the final departure of the
French from the island, though the civil and military powers and the
whole of the island, save Valetta, were in the hands of the
peasantry, not a single act of excess can be charged against the
Maltese, if we except the razing of one house at Civita Vecchia
belonging to a notorious and abandoned traitor, the creature and
hireling of the French. In no instance did they injure, insult, or
plunder, any one of the native nobility, or employ even the
appearance of force toward them, except in the collection of the lead
and iron from their houses and gardens, in order to supply themselves
with bullets; and this very appearance was assumed from the generous
wish to shelter the nobles from the resentment of the French, should
the patriotic efforts of the peasantry prove unsuccessful. At the
dire command of famine the Maltese troops did indeed once force their
way to the ovens in which the bread for the British soldiery was
baked, and were clamorous that an equal division should be made. I
mention this unpleasant circumstance, because it brought into proof
the firmness of Sir Alexander Ball's character, his presence of mind,
and generous disregard of danger and personal responsibility, where
the slavery or emancipation, the misery or the happiness, of an
innocent and patriotic people were involved; and because his conduct
in this exigency evinced that his general habits of circumspection
and deliberation were the results of wisdom and complete self-
possession, and not the easy virtues of a spirit constitutionally
timorous and hesitating. He was sitting at table with the principal
British officers, when a certain general addressed him in strong and
violent terms concerning this outrage of the Maltese, reminding him
of the necessity of exerting his commanding influence in the present
case, or the consequences must be taken. "What," replied Sir
Alexander Ball, "would you have us do? Would you have us threaten
death to men dying with famine? Can you suppose that the hazard of
being shot will weigh with whole regiments acting under a common
necessity? Does not the extremity of hunger take away all difference
between men and animals? and is it not as absurd to appeal to the
prudence of a body of men starving, as to a herd of famished wolves?
No, general, I will not degrade myself or outrage humanity by
menacing famine with massacre! More effectual means must be taken."
With these words he rose and left the room, and having first
consulted with Sir Thomas Troubridge, he determined at his own risk
on a step, which the extreme necessity warranted, and which the
conduct of the Neapolitan court amply justified. For this court,
though terror-stricken by the French, was still actuated by hatred to
the English, and a jealousy of their power in the Mediterranean; and
in this so strange and senseless a manner, that we must join the
extremes of imbecility and treachery in the same cabinet, in order to
find it comprehensible. Though the very existence of Naples and
Sicily, as a nation, depended wholly and exclusively on British
support; though the royal family owed their personal safety to the
British fleet; though not only their dominions and their rank, but
the liberty and even the lives of Ferdinand and his family, were
interwoven with our success; yet with an infatuation scarcely
credible, the most affecting representations of the distress of the
besiegers, and of the utter insecurity of Sicily if the French
remained possessors of Malta, were treated with neglect; and the
urgent remonstrances for the permission of importing corn from
Messina, were answered only by sanguinary edicts precluding all
supply. Sir Alexander Ball sent for his senior lieutenant, and gave
him orders to proceed immediately to the port of Messina, and there
to seize and bring with him to Malta the ships laden with corn, of
the number of which Sir Alexander had received accurate information.
These orders were executed without delay, to the great delight and
profit of the shipowners and proprietors; the necessity of raising
the siege was removed; and the author of the measure waited in
calmness for the consequences that might result to himself
personally. But not a complaint, not a murmur, proceeded from the
court of Naples. The sole result was, that the governor of Malta
became an especial object of its hatred, its fear, and its respect.

The whole of this tedious siege, from its commencement to the signing
of the capitulation, called forth into constant activity the rarest
and most difficult virtues of a commanding mind; virtues of no show
or splendour in the vulgar apprehension, yet more infallible
characteristics of true greatness than the most unequivocal displays
of enterprise and active daring. Scarcely a day passed in which Sir
Alexander Ball's patience, forbearance, and inflexible constancy were
not put to the severest trial. He had not only to remove the
misunderstandings that arose between the Maltese and their allies, to
settle the differences among the Maltese themselves, and to organise
their efforts; he was likewise engaged in the more difficult and
unthankful task of counteracting the weariness, discontent, and
despondency of his own countrymen--a task, however, which he
accomplished by management and address, and an alternation of real
firmness with apparent yielding. During many months he remained the
only Englishman who did not think the siege hopeless, and the object
worthless. He often spoke of the time in which he resided at the
country seat of the grand master at St. Antonio, four miles from
Valetta, as perhaps the most trying period of his life. For some
weeks Captain Vivian was his sole English companion, of whom, as his
partner in anxiety, he always expressed himself with affectionate
esteem. Sir Alexander Ball's presence was absolutely necessary to
the Maltese, who, accustomed to be governed by him, became incapable
of acting in concert without his immediate influence. In the
outburst of popular emotion, the impulse which produces an
insurrection, is for a brief while its sufficient pilot: the
attraction constitutes the cohesion, and the common provocation,
supplying an immediate object, not only unites, but directs the
multitude. But this first impulse had passed away, and Sir Alexander
Ball was the one individual who possessed the general confidence. On
him they relied with implicit faith; and even after they had long
enjoyed the blessings of British government and protection, it was
still remarkable with what child-like helplessness they were in the
habit of applying to him, even in their private concerns. It seemed
as if they thought him made on purpose to think for them all. Yet
his situation at St. Antonio was one of great peril; and he
attributed his preservation to the dejection which had now begun to
prey on the spirits of the French garrison, and which rendered them
unenterprising and almost passive, aided by the dread which the
nature of the country inspired. For subdivided as it was into small
fields, scarcely larger than a cottage garden, and each of these
little squares of land inclosed with substantial stone walls; these
too from the necessity of having the fields perfectly level, rising
in tiers above each other; the whole of the inhabited part of the
island was an effective fortification for all the purposes of
annoyance and offensive warfare. Sir Alexander Ball exerted himself
successfully in procuring information respecting the state and temper
of the garrison, and, by the assistance of the clergy and the almost
universal fidelity of the Maltese, contrived that the spies in the
pay of the French should be in truth his own confidential agents. He
had already given splendid proofs that he could outfight them; but
here, and in his after diplomatic intercourse previous to the
recommencement of the war, he likewise outwitted them. He once told
me with a smile, as we were conversing on the practice of laying
wagers, that he was sometimes inclined to think that the final
perseverance in the siege was not a little indebted to several
valuable bets of his own, he well knowing at the time, and from
information which himself alone possessed, that he should certainly
lose them. Yet this artifice had a considerable effect in suspending
the impatience of the officers, and in supplying topics for dispute
and conversation. At length, however, the two French frigates, the
sailing of which had been the subject of these wagers, left the great
harbour on the 24th of August, 1800, with a part of the garrison:
and one of them soon became a prize to the English. Sir Alexander
Ball related to me the circumstances which occasioned the escape of
the other; but I do not recollect them with sufficient accuracy to
dare repeat them in this place. On the 15th of September following,
the capitulation was signed, and after a blockade of two years the
English obtained possession of Valetta, and remained masters of the
whole island and its dependencies.

Anxious not to give offence, but more anxious to communicate the
truth, it is not without pain that I find myself under the moral
obligation of remonstrating against the silence concerning Sir
Alexander Ball's services or the transfer of them to others. More
than once has the latter aroused my indignation in the reported
speeches of the House of Commons: and as to the former, I need only
state that in Rees's Encyclopaedia there is an historical article of
considerable length under the word Malta, in which Sir Alexander's
name does not once occur! During a residence of eighteen months in
that island, I possessed and availed myself of the best possible
means of information, not only from eye-witnesses, but likewise from
the principal agents themselves. And I now thus publicly and
unequivocally assert, that to Sir A. Ball pre-eminently--and if I had
said, to Sir A. Ball alone, the ordinary use of the word under such
circumstances would bear me out--the capture and the preservation of
Malta were owing, with every blessing that a powerful mind and a wise
heart could confer on its docile and grateful inhabitants. With a
similar pain I proceed to avow my sentiments on this capitulation, by
which Malta was delivered up to his Britannic Majesty and his allies,
without the least mention made of the Maltese. With a warmth
honourable both to his head and his heart, Sir Alexander Ball
pleaded, as not less a point of sound policy than of plain justice,
that the Maltese, by some representative, should be made a party in
the capitulation, and a joint subscriber in the signature. They had
never been the slaves or the property of the Knights of St. John, but
freemen and the true landed proprietors of the country, the civil and
military government of which, under certain restrictions, had been
vested in that Order; yet checked by the rights and influences of the
clergy and the native nobility, and by the customs and ancient laws
of the island. This trust the Knights had, with the blackest treason
and the most profligate perjury, betrayed and abandoned. The right
of government of course reverted to the landed proprietors and the
clergy. Animated by a just sense of this right, the Maltese had
risen of their own accord, had contended for it in defiance of death
and danger, had fought bravely, and endured patiently. Without
undervaluing the military assistance afterwards furnished by Great
Britain (though how scanty this was before the arrival of General
Pigot is well known), it remains undeniable, that the Maltese had
taken the greatest share both in the fatigues and in the privations
consequent on the siege; and that had not the greatest virtues and
the most exemplary fidelity been uniformly displayed by them, the
English troops (they not being more numerous than they had been for
the greater part of the two years) could not possibly have remained
before the fortifications of Valetta, defended as that city was by a
French garrison that greatly outnumbered the British besiegers.
Still less could there have been the least hope of ultimate success;
as if any part of the Maltese peasantry had been friendly to the
French, or even indifferent, if they had not all indeed been most
zealous and persevering in their hostility towards them, it would
have been impracticable so to blockade that island as to have
precluded the arrival of supplies. If the siege had proved
unsuccessful, the Maltese were well aware that they should be exposed
to all the horrors which revenge and wounded pride could dictate to
an unprincipled, rapacious, and sanguinary soldiery; and now that
success has crowned their efforts, is this to be their reward, that
their own allies are to bargain for them with the French as for a
herd of slaves, whom the French had before purchased from a former
proprietor? If it be urged, that there is no established government
in Malta, is it not equally true that through the whole population of
the island there is not a single dissentient? and thus that the chief
inconvenience which an established authority is to obviate is
virtually removed by the admitted fact of their unanimity? And have
they not a bishop, and a dignified clergy, their judges and municipal
magistrates, who were at all times sharers in the power of the
government, and now, supported by the unanimous suffrage of the
inhabitants, have a rightful claim to be considered as its
representatives? Will it not be oftener said than answered, that the
main difference between French and English injustice rests in this
point alone, that the French seized on the Maltese without any
previous pretences of friendship, while the English procured
possession of the island by means of their friendly promises, and by
the co-operation of the natives afforded in confident reliance on
these promises? The impolicy of refusing the signature on the part
of the Maltese was equally evident; since such refusal could answer
no one purpose but that of alienating their affections by a wanton
insult to their feelings. For the Maltese were not only ready but
desirous and eager to place themselves at the same time under British
protection, to take the oaths of loyalty as subjects of the British
Crown, and to acknowledge their island to belong to it. These
representations, however, were overruled; and I dare affirm from my
own experience in the Mediterranean, that our conduct in this
instance, added to the impression which had been made at Corsica,
Minorca, and elsewhere, and was often referred to by men of
reflection in Sicily, who have more than once said to me, "A
connection with Great Britain, with the consequent extension and
security of our commerce, are indeed great blessings: but who can
rely on their permanence? or that we shall not be made to pay
bitterly for our zeal as partisans of England, whenever it shall suit
its plans to deliver us back to our old oppressors?"