He Wants To Know The Assets Of A Place More
Than Its Associations.
Facts, figures, trade and revenue returns
are the data his shrewd mind requires to feed on.
He has a keen
eye for harbours suitable for an English frigate to lie up in,
and can hardly rest until his sagacity has collected material for
a political horoscope.
Smollett's remarks upon the mysterious dispensations of
Providence in regard to Genoa and the retreat of the Austrians
are charged to the full with his saturnine spirit. His suspicions
were probably well founded. Ever since 1685 Genoa had been the
more or less humiliated satellite of France, and her once famous
Bank had been bled pretty extensively by both belligerents. The
Senate was helpless before the Austrian engineers in 1745, and
the emancipation of the city was due wholly to a popular emeute.
She had relapsed again into a completely enervated condition.
Smollett thought she would have been happier under British
protection. But it is a vicious alternative for a nation to
choose a big protector. It was characteristic of the Republic
that from 1790 to 1798 its "policy" was to remain neutral. The
crisis in regard to Corsica came immediately after Smollett's
visit, when in 1765, under their 154th doge Francesco Maria
Rovere, the Genoese offered to abandon the island to the patriots
under Paoli, reserving only the possession of the two loyal
coast-towns of Bonifazio and Calvi. [See Boswell's Corsica, 1766-8.]
At Paoli's instance these conciliatory terms were refused.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 55 of 535
Words from 14780 to 15031
of 143308
