nauseam_, at Amiens proved that the Maltese Question would long
continue to perplex the world. The matter was still further
complicated by the abolition of the Priories, Commanderies, and
property of the Order of St. John by the French Government in the
spring of 1802--an example which was imitated by the Court of Madrid
in the following autumn; and as the property of the Knights in the
French part of Italy had also lapsed, it was difficult to see how the
scattered and impoverished Knights could form a stable government,
especially if the native Maltese were not to be admitted to a share in
public affairs. This action of France, Spain, and Russia fully
warranted the British Government in not admitting into the fortress
the 2,000 Neapolitan troops that arrived in the autumn of 1802. Our
evacuation of Malta was conditioned by several stipulations, five of
which had not been fulfilled.[234] But the difficulties arising out of
the reconstruction of this moribund Order were as nothing when
compared with those resulting from the reopening of a far vaster and
more complex question--the "eternal" Eastern Question.

Rarely has the mouldering away of the Turkish Empire gone on so
rapidly as at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Corruption and
favouritism paralyzed the Government at Constantinople; masterful
pachas, aping the tactics of Ali Pacha, the virtual ruler of Albania,
were beginning to carve out satrapies in Syria, Asia Minor, Wallachia,
and even in Roumelia itself. Such was the state of Turkey when the
Sultan and his advisers heard with deep concern, in October, 1801,
that the only Power on whose friendship they could firmly rely was
about to relinquish Malta. At once he sent an earnest appeal to George
III. begging him not to evacuate the island. This despatch is not in
the archives of our Foreign Office; but the letter written from Malta
by Lord Elgin, our ambassador at Constantinople, on his return home,
sufficiently shows that the Sultan was conscious of his own weakness
and of the schemes of partition which were being concocted at Paris.
Bonaparte had already begun to sound both Austria and Russia on this
subject, deftly hinting that the Power which did not early join in the
enterprise would come poorly off. For the present both the rulers
rejected his overtures; but he ceased not to hope that the anarchy in
Turkey, and the jealousy which partition schemes always arouse among
neighbours, would draw first one a