en in Sicily, where, if it had been possible longer
to blind himself, Nelson would willingly have seen no evil, he perceived
that the people wished for a change, and acknowledged that they had
reason to wish for it. In Sardinia the same burden of misgovernment
was felt; and the people, like the Sicilians, were impoverished by
a government so utterly incompetent to perform its first and most
essential duties that it did not protect its own coasts from the Barbary
pirates. He would fain have had us purchase this island (the finest in
the Mediterranean) from its sovereign, who did not receive L5000 a year
from it after its wretched establishment was paid. There was reason to
think that France was preparing to possess herself of this important
point, which afforded our fleet facilities for watching Toulon, not to
be obtained elsewhere. An expedition was preparing at Corsica for the
purpose; and all the Sardes, who had taken part with revolutionary
France, were ordered to assemble there. It was certain that if the
attack were made it would succeed. Nelson thought that the only means to
prevent Sardinia from becoming French was to make it English, and that
half a million would give the king a rich price, and England a cheap
purchase. A better, and therefore a wiser policy, would have been
to exert our influence in removing the abuses of the government, for
foreign dominion is always, in some degree, an evil and allegiance
neither can nor ought to be made a thing of bargain and sale. Sardinia,
like Sicily and Corsica, is large enough to form a separate state. Let
us hope that these islands may one day be made free and independent.
Freedom and independence will bring with them industry and
prosperity; and wherever these are found, arts and letters will flourish,
and the improvement of the human race proceed.

The proposed attack was postponed. Views of wider ambition were opening
upon Buonaparte, who now almost undisguisedldy aspired to make himself
master of the continent of Europe; and Austria was preparing for another
struggle, to be conducted as weakly and terminated as miserably as the
former. Spain, too, was once more to be involved in war by the policy of
France: that perfidious government having in view the double object of
employing the Spanish resources against England, and exhausting them in
order to render Spain herself finally its prey. Nelson, who knew that
England and the Peninsula ought to be in alliance, for the