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WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE
CH. X
succeed; but as it was at present, he looked upon the Corsicans as devoted to destruction, and with every nation in Europe wishing well to their cause, abandoned by them all. As to England in particular, he did not doubt but at this very moment she was deliberating on the part she ought to take, but while Rome deliberated Saguntum was lost. She would however find, when it was too late, that Corsica would give the French the dominion of the Mediterranean Sea. "The King of Sardinia," he said also, "whose interests are so nearly concerned, looks tamely on, but who knows but he may live to repent it? Should the Corsicans driven from their own country, as their last refuge in despair fell upon Sardinia, it would become an easy conquest to them, and all his power would not be able to tear it out of their hands, unless like the Genoese he called in his friends the French to retake the island, and gave it them for their pains." He complained much of the extreme backwardness he had always experienced in the English Ministry to treat with him directly; that he had not found the same delicacy in the nations most closely allied with the Genoese; that he had treated with the Ministers of Spain, Sardinia, Naples, and the Pope, and had been in close correspondence for four years with M. de Choiseul. I interrupted him and said, that perhaps this very correspondence had made the English Ministers more shy; that he must have heard that the French gave out that they acted in concert with him, and that it was even universally believed that he had great offers made him from the Court of Versailles. He replied that he knew too well that such reports were current, that they had even prevailed among his own people for some time, but he would show to the whole world that they were false and insidious. He protested he never had any such offers from France, that there had not been found a man hardy enough to propose them. "Besides," added he, "what temptation can France throw in my way equal to the loss of the reputation, small as it is, which I have acquired already? I covet neither riches nor pleasures, and have no children nor family to establish: I should live execrated by my own country and despised by France itself." He said that the only hint of that sort he ever received was three years ago, when on occasion of the vacancy of the Regiment of Royal Corse, he ventured to recommend Colonel Butofuoco to the Due de Choiseul. His answer was, that the King proposed to incorporate that Regiment with the Royal Italian, but that if he had views that way either for himself or his brother, His Majesty might take other arrangements, and would, he believed, listen to any further proposal on his part. But he declared that since the late Treaty with the Genoese he has had no correspondence directly nor indirectly with M. Choiseul, that
