nd Ministers realized their mistake in relying
on verbal promises and in failing to procure a written statement.[182]

The abandonment by Ministers of their former claim to Malta is equally
strange. Nelson, though he held Malta to be useless as a base for the
British fleet watching Toulon, made the memorable statement: "I
consider Malta as a most important outwork to India." But a despatch
from St. Petersburg, stating that the new Czar had concluded a formal
treaty of alliance with the Order of St. John settled in Russia, may
have convinced Addington and his colleagues that it would be better to
forego all claim to Malta in order to cement the newly won friendship
of Russia. Whatever may have been their motive, British Ministers
consented to cede the island to the Knights of St. John under the
protection of some third Power.

The preliminaries of peace were further remarkable for three strange
omissions. They did not provide for the renewal of previous treaties
of peace between the late combatants. War is held to break all
previous treaties; and by failing to require the renewal of the
treaties of 1713, 1763, and 1783, it was now open to Spain and France
to cement, albeit in a new form, that Family Compact which it had long
been the aim of British diplomacy to dissolve: the failure to renew
those earlier treaties rendered it possible for the Court of Madrid to
alienate any of its colonies to France, as at that very time was being
arranged with respect to Louisiana.

The second omission was equally remarkable. No mention was made of any
renewal of commercial intercourse between England and France.
Doubtless a complete settlement of this question would have been
difficult. British merchants would have looked for a renewal of that
enlightened treaty of commerce of 1786-7, which had aroused the bitter
opposition of French manufacturers. But the question might have been
broached at London, and its omission from the preliminaries served as
a reason for shelving it in the definitive treaty--a piece of folly
which at once provoked the severest censure from British
manufacturers, who thereby lost the markets of France, and her subject
States, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Genoa, and Etruria.

And, finally, the terms of peace provided no compensation either for
the French royal House or for the dispossessed House of Orange. Here
again, it would have been very difficult to find a recompense such as
the Bourbons could with digni