of
origin, wealth, and occupation, though at times the occasion of
intestine discord, were as nothing compared with the common
characteristics which knit the population of the entire island into
one national organization, as much a unit as their insular territory.

The people of this small commonwealth were in the main of Italian
blood. Some slight connection with the motherland they still
maintained in the relations of commerce, and by the education of their
professional men at Italian schools. While a small minority supported
themselves as tradesmen or seafarers, the mass of the population was
dependent for a livelihood upon agriculture. As a nation they had long
ceased to follow the course of general European development. They had
been successively the subjects of Greece, Rome, and the Califate, of
the German-Roman emperors, and of the republic of Pisa. Their latest
ruler was Genoa, which had now degenerated into an untrustworthy
oligarchy. United to that state originally by terms which gave the
island a "speaker" or advocate in the Genoese senate, and recognized
the most cherished habits of a hardy, natural-minded, and primitive
people, they had little by little been left a prey to their own faults
in order that their unworthy mistress might plead their disorders as
an excuse for her tyranny. Agriculture languished, and the minute
subdivision of arable land finally rendered its tillage almost
profitless.

Among a people who are isolated not only as islanders, but also as
mountaineers, old institutions are particularly tenacious of life:
that of the vendetta, or blood revenge, with the clanship it
accompanies, never disappeared from Corsica. In the centuries of
Genoese rule the carrying of arms was winked at, quarrels became rife,
and often family confederations, embracing a considerable part of the
country, were arrayed one against the other in lawless violence. The
feudal nobility, few in number, were unrecognized, and failed to
cultivate the industrial arts in the security of costly strongholds as
their class did elsewhere, while the fairest portions of land not held
by them were gradually absorbed by the monasteries, a process favored
by Genoa as likely to render easier the government of a turbulent
people. The human animal, however, throve. Rudely clad in homespun,
men and women alike cultivated a simplicity of dress surpassed only by
their plain living. There was no wealth except that of fields and
flocks,