of the King. Still more unfortunate was the English position regarding Malta. That island had not been restored to the Knights of St. John, according to the stipulations of the recent treaty, though all the conditions on which the restoration was to depend had been fulfilled, and the English ultimatum now proposed that the evacuation should not take place till the end of a further term of ten years, and then without any regard to the possessory claims of the Knights.
These points were insisted upon by Lord Lansdowne in the last speech he made in Parliament. "Let us first try," he said, "every possible way to obtain by conciliation the objects we are desirous of possessing; and if our efforts fail, let us then have recourse to arms. Let us profit by the example of the American war and take care that our discretion and prudence be not sacrificed to false glory."[1] The die was however cast. On April 29th, 1803, war was again declared, and on May the 12th, 1804, Pitt again became Prime Minister. Lord Lansdowne saw these events with a feeling akin to despair. He determined however to continue the struggle, but illness and infirmity, which soon proved fatal, now began to make it difficult for him to appear in Parliament. The brief remainder of his life was spent at Bowood, now cheered only by the hopes of the future career of his second son. "Henry," he writes to Lord Holland, "promises to be a very great resource to me, so far as private life goes, and as to public life, I have seen so much of it, that I shall consider it as no misfortune if he fails in it. My next greatest resource is this place, where I am perpetually doing and undoing, and to which I grow every day more attached. "You will be pleased," the letter continues, the old flame kindling for a moment, "that Dumont and Bentham's book is likely to make its way and to lay the foundation of a new science in Legislation. It ought to be translated into Spanish."[2] "Whatever disappointments," said Fox, "Lansdowne may have had in public life, and
