What now, O man! thou dost or mean'st to do Will help to give thee peace, or make thee rue, When hovering o'er the Dot this hand shall tell The moment that secures thee _Heaven_ or _Hell_.[62]
May God bless you! My kindest remembrances to Mr. Chubb, and to Ward. Pray remember me when you write to your sister and Mr. King. Oh, but Poole! do stretch a point and come. If the F. rises to a 1,000 I will frank you. Do come; never will you have layed out money better.
MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I suspect you have misunderstood me, and applied to the Maltese Regiment what I said of the Corsican Rangers. Both are bad enough, but of the former I know little, of course, as I was away from Malta before the regiment had left the island. But in the Essays (2 or 3) which I am now writing on Sir A. Ball, I shall mention it as an exemplification among many others of his foresight. It was a _job_, I have no doubt, merely to get General Valette a lucrative regiment; but _G. V._ is dead, and it was not such a job as that of the Corsican Rangers, which can be made _appear_ glaring. The long and short of the story is, that the men were four fifths married, would have fought as well as the best, _at home_ and behind their own walls, but could not be expected to fight abroad, where they had no interest. Besides, it was _cruel_, _shameful_ to take 1,500 men as soldiers for any part of our enormous Empire, out of a population, man, woman, and child, not at that time more than 100,000. There were two Maltese Militia Regiments officered by their own Maltese nobility--these against the entreaties and _tears_ of the men and officers (I myself saw them weeping), against the remonstrances and memorial (written by myself) of Sir A. B., were melted into one large one, officered by English officers, and a general affront given to the island, _because_ General Valette had great friends at the War Office, Duke of York, etc.! This is the whole, but do not either expose yourself or me to judicial inquiries. It is one thing to _know_ a thing, and another to be able to _prove_ it in a law court. This remark applies to the _damnable_ treatment of the prisoners of war at Malta.
I should have thought your facts, with which I am familiar, a confirmation of Miss Schöning.[63] Be that as it may, take my word for it, that in _substance_ the story is as certain as that Dr. Dodd was hung. To mention one proof only, Von Hess,[64] the celebrated historian of Hamburg, and, since Lessing, the best German prosist, went himself to Nuremberg, examined into the facts officially and personally, and it was on him that I relied, though if you knew the government of Nuremberg, you would see that the first account could not have been published as it was, if it had not been too notorious even for concealment to be hoped for. After I left Germany, Von Hess had a public controversy that threatened to become a _Diet_ concern with the magistrates of Nuremberg, for some other bitter charges against them. I have their defence of themselves, but they do not even attempt to deny the _fact_ of _Harlin_ and _Schöning_. But, indeed, Southey! it is almost as bad as if I could have mistaken _e converso_ Patch's trial for a novel.