You have peremptory ordinances _against_ making roads, taxes
on the passage of common vegetables from one miserable village to another,
and so on.
By the by, do you know any parallel in modern history to the absurdity of
our giving a legislative assembly to the Sicilians? It exceeds any thing I
know. This precious legislature passed two bills before it was knocked on
the head: the first was, to render lands inalienable; and the second, to
cancel all debts due before the date of the bill.
And then consider the gross ignorance and folly of our laying a tax upon
the Sicilians! Taxation in its proper sense can only exist where there is a
free circulation of capital, labour, and commodities throughout the
community. But to tax the people in countries like Sicily and Corsica,
where there is no internal communication, is mere robbery and confiscation.
A crown taken from a Corsican living in the sierras would not get back to
him again in ten years.
* * * * *
It is interesting to pass from Malta to Sicily--from the highest specimen
of an inferior race, the Saracenic, to the most degraded class of a
superior race, the European.
* * * * *
No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the Maltese when the island
was surrendered to us.
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