The impressive multitudes of beggars in the harbour towns during the first half of the 19th century could not avoid distressing noticeably public decency and urban hygiene. The concerted bowel movements of the homeless thousands made sure the streets were fast becoming one extended public convenience. At that level of brutishness, finding a place to crap acquired more existential urgency than musing over the fraying of constitutional freedoms.

A major concern of the colonial Governors became not how to relieve famine and destitution, but how to give a public lesson to those who relieved themselves in public. To the puritan rulers, not displaying grubby genitals in the unsavoury act (those “sights most foul, those odours most sickening”) appeared to be a seriously more critical priority than driving grubby genitals off the streets. An 1819 Government Notice targeted principally the roofless mendicants and the lower calls of nature.

We find no evidence of wholesale distress in Malta under the Hospitallers, before the Order’s finances plummeted catastrophically with the loss of their estates to the French Revolution

After remarking how the streets of Valletta were turning into a bed of excrement, Governor Sir Thomas Maitland, holding his nose, thundered: “Any person who has so little concern for the common decency as to make use of the public streets as toilets, will be liable to a fine in proportion to his social condition, or to detention for 24 hours on bread and water should the person not be in a position to pay this fine. Occupiers of houses are expected to employ special diligence to see that these regulations are enforced, and to hand over to the police any individual who breaches these regulations in the vicinity of their house. Informers will be entitled to receive one half of the fine.”

Compare this to the wonder-struck John Dryden Jr who admired, almost unbelieving, the perfect cleanliness of the streets in Malta at the time of the Knights: “Nothing is more wholesome or cleaner than the streets of Malta.”

The inescapable, in-your-face indigence of the Maltese in this period of their history also left its effects on St John’s Co-Cathedral. There came a time when the church administrators felt compelled to remove the old wooden benches that lined the aisle of that aesthetic masterpiece. Homeless beggars had been using the sacred edifice for shelter and the benches to sleep on. That was already a sharp affront to the decorum of the house of God.

What really broke the camel’s back were the piles of faeces and the puddles of urine that started festering in every corner. Pools and stools. The monsignors faced a dire choice between refusing refuge to the homeless, or marketing St John’s as the most luxurious baroque latrine in the Christian world. They opted for the smell of incense over the fetor of untreated sewage.

We find no evidence of wholesale distress in Malta under the Hospitallers, before the Order’s finances plummeted catastrophically with the loss of their estates to the French Revolution. Even in this last period of decline, it is chiefly the anonymous Order-hater Carasi who remarked on any widespread indigence.

Otherwise, Malta was generally perceived to be a relatively affluent country, possibly the most well-off in the lower Mediterranean littoral – gracious, well-organised, civilised, with little if any discontent or aggressive poverty in whatever stratum of the population.

One Scottish traveller to Malta in 1770 recorded the shock tourists suffered on landing in Valletta arriving from Syracuse, where they had been overwhelmed by the forlorn depopulation, disease and wretchedness then endemic in Sicily.

In the Malta of the Knights, the author recorded how dramatically the contrast struck him: “On getting on shore we found ourselves in a new world indeed, the streets crowded with well-dressed people who have all the appearance of health and affluence.” He does not mention ever seeing one solitary beggar, let alone the legions that sprouted everywhere during the British period.

Beggary inevitably gave rise to irreverent and black humour. The story is recounted, as true, of a miserable mendicant accosting a well-heeled ecclesiastic: “Father, for the love of the Virgin, give me a shilling.”

“No.”

“Then give me sixpence.”

“No.”

“One penny?”

“No.”

“A farthing?”

“No.”

The pauper fell back on one last plea: “Then give me a blessing”.

“That I will gladly give you. Kneel down, my son.”

The beggar had second thoughts: “If your blessing is worth less than a farthing, I don’t think I really want it – keep it.”

Disillusionment and unrest stalked Malta after the rule of Sir Alexander Ball, with the phasing out of the Continental System. English-speaking authors of the period are the first to acknowledge how far better off the Maltese had been with the Knights of St John than under their new colonial rulers. When the Order ruled Malta, “money was disseminated in a thousand channels among the native population. The sources of that prosperity are chiefly dried out”.

Our perceptions of early Anglo-Maltese relations are mostly coloured by the fact that a number of high-profile Maltese merchants and of the nobility – those who hollered in the louder soprano register – generally sided with the British. They would, wouldn’t they? Maltese trade pivoted round the export of cotton, and, from a purely egoistical standpoint, only the powerful British navy could keep commercial sea routes open and their profits safe. The fatter Maltese oligarchs understandably endorsed only one dominant interest, and that was brazenly a self-interest: the British whose fleet protected their sources of wealth.

The cotton merchants’ fawning did not get them far. The cheaper crops from Egypt and the longer threads from America more suitable for heavy machinery, but above all, the competition from the cut-price British cotton-cloth industry, had mostly driven them bankrupt by 1840 – an ironic reward for their enthusiasm for the mother country.

A good segment of the nobility, on the other hand, had always, for reasons irrelevant to this study, borne a latent grudge against the Knights of the Order of St John, and were generally glad to see their backs. The British Governors honoured them mockingly with operetta decorations and Grand Opera titles, like Lords-Lieutenant, all shell and no content, and then parked them safely in their pockets – with a few praiseworthy exceptions.

Then there were the owners of the grog shops, boarding houses and bordellos that almost overnight sprouted all over the harbour towns and their suburbs to service the various above and below-the-belt cravings of the largest fleet in the world. No doubt, these also entered ‘Godsavetheking’ as their password.

So yes, some of the aristocracy and of the big businessmen who had a vested interest in supporting the British connection also had an interest in competing briskly in the bootlickers’ marathon. But these only accounted for a tiny minority. What about the absolute majority of the Maltese? Were they happy with the new government? Did they perceive the change to the new order as an improvement?

For the great majority, the change meant that nothing got better and a lot got worse.

We have two threads of evidence to follow: that of those Maltese who did not consider silence an option, and that of foreign observers with no vested interests either way. I prefer to rely on the memoirs of independent foreigners.

Under the Hospitallers, Malta had occasionally suffered some episodic difficulties negative to the well-being of the inhabitants, like pestilences and droughts and bans on commerce from Sicily for political or sanitary reasons or the loss of most of the Order’s revenues to the French Revolution. These had impacted, sometimes cruelly, on the lives of the less wealthy.

But apart from the French ruin, these lows had been transient. When the relative affluence the Maltese in general had enjoyed under the Order was compared to the tragic, persistent penury they found themselves in under the new colonial masters, it is hardly surprising to discover where the preferences of the overwhelming majority of the Maltese lay. One principal virtue had profiled the Order over the centuries: obsequium pauperum – service to the poor, and that was not forgotten.

A contemporary observer wrote: “It is natural to compare past with later times, and the contrast offers small matter of contentment with the present order of things. The Maltese sigh for the recurrence of the good old days, when the Knights Hospitallers were their patrons and sovereigns. They now bewail the destruction of their Order. They speak of them with mingled gratitude and veneration and dislike the English more cordially, in consequence of the love no less enthusiastic, which they cherish for their former masters, the Chevaliers of St John.”

Another fair-minded British witness factored in, at least conceptually, an armed revolt by the Maltese against the colonial despots. Sardonically he remarks that Malta “enjoys all the privileges and advantages that would speedily lead to a new performance of the Sicilian Vespers” – the spontaneous 1282 uprising of an oppressed people that changed the course of history. This had not happened in Malta, the author adds, not because the population is not seething with resentment, but only because the natives “are well aware that England possesses the dominion of the seas and that, consequently, every attempt at shaking off the yolk must prove abortive. The island could not possibly be worse governed than it is now”.

The Protestant clergyman James Phillips Fletcher confirms that as late as 1842, when he stayed in Malta, the pro-Knights sentiment still flourished as strongly among the population as it had done in the earliest phase of the British connection: “Malta abounds, of course, with the reminisces of the Knights: they seem to have been much beloved, though in many respects they held the reins of government with a tight hand... with all their faults, the Maltese remembers his old masters with regret. Old men will talk sorrowfully of the times of ‘the religion’ (the Order).”

Contemporary foreign commentators unfurled a number of detailed reasons to explain why the Maltese in general had got on well with the Knights and resented the new British overlords: “The government of the Chevaliers, represented by the Grand Master, if not strictly paternal, was sufficiently beneficent; the best proof of which is that the Maltese never murmured under their jurisdiction.”

Under the rule of the Order, the people “were never directly taxed; they were constantly receiving favours from the Order, and they naturally repaid their benefactors with praises and blessings. No disputes could possibly arise among them since the very judges of the Maltese, as likewise their municipal officers, were allowed to be chosen from among themselves. In short, all civil employments, even those which related to the finances, were filled by the natives... the abolition of the government of the Knights Hospitallers was an event most deplorable to the Maltese themselves”.

The Knights left Valletta a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen. Within a few years it had turned into a city ruled by parasites for paupers

Virtually all the civil and public service posts reserved for the Maltese by the Order of St John had been instantly hijacked by the new overlords.

To compound the nostalgic affection of the majority of Maltese for the old rule of the Order of St John, the frigid relations between the native Maltese and their new colonial rulers must be factored in. Frigid is hardly the right word. Between the two populations existed a “cordial hatred” – cordial in the 19th-century sense of deeply heartfelt, not in today’s meaning of affable.

The British had made sure insurmountable barriers disconnected them from the natives, with almost no communications, let alone association, between them. The more enlightened British observers blamed their countrymen exclusively for this glacial rapport: “The absurd and silly prejudices of a few English merchants and some self-satisfied military residents have indeed created a gulf between the two races, who, separated by mutual antipathies, care not to mix together in society, and perhaps the chilling repulsiveness of our northern manners accords ill with the warm and excitable temperament of the south... At Malta, you have the mutual antagonism of the English and the continental enacted on a small scale.”

Going into detail and examples, we learn some of the reasons for this attrition, like “the English merchants who began to establish themselves in Valletta after 1815 were disposed to look with some contempt on the Maltese baron or marchese... And the Maltese gentleman, repaying the pride of purse with the pride of birth, avoided the society of the foreigner where his claims were not appreciated or his position respected... they retaliated the contempt of the foreigner with the most cordial hatred of him and his heresy”.

The basic affection the majority of the people had for the Hospitallers may be the reason why, on every festive occasion, in towns and villages, the flag of the Order went on and is still being hoisted proudly to the present day, long after the Knights have left our shores. No festa would be the same without the flags of the Order of St John (il-bandiera tar-Religjon), the white cross on a red field, dominating the roofscape. Why else, over 200 years after the end of the Knights’ regime?

Today, that flag has almost totally lost its nostalgic significance, but its uninterrupted presence – spanning over 200 years – since the days of the Knights, goes to underscore a latent rapport that still bonded the people to the Order, so long after the departure of the Knights from the island.

History records not a single act of major protest or revolt by the Maltese masses against the government of the Order. The so-called Mannarino uprising of 1775 flopped spectacularly through a total lack of popular support, and the 1797 revolt planned by Vassalli fared no better.

Although almost all the authority for this study comes from non-Maltese sources, a parallel thread runs through the political literature of the native patriots and discontents. In 1836, George Mitrovich, the purest, saddest, the most compelling voice of the downtrodden in those times, could not help putting on record: “During the period in which this island was possessed by the Order of St John, its inhabitants were happy and contented, a strong proof of which is contained in the wonderfully rapid increase of its population under that government.”

Another native Maltese, writing in 1839, confirms the pleasant memories the inhabitants generally had of the rule of the Order: “besides the abundance that they (the Maltese) derived from the rich revenues of the Order, they were mostly governed softly (con dolcezza), on many occasions protected and vindicated by the Grand Masters against abuses by members of the Order, every person treated according to his merit and condition.”

The colonial Governors resented self-immolating heroes like Mitrovich, whose subservience, differently from that of some others, was not for sale. The state had a flourishing monopoly on legalised oppression, and the Governors were unforgiving of anyone seen to be questioning it. Those ‘disaffected intrigants’ pushing political discourse anywhere outside the strict confines of passive unctuousness, were blurring the dangerous borderline between freedom of expression and sedition.

Sir Alexander Ball never had second thoughts about keeping under arrest, or exiling from the island without even the semblance of a mock trial, any Maltese who criticised him (che osava sparlare di lui) or his government (no real difference there).

Had things changed noticeably as far as indigence went, by the end of the first half of the 19th century? Not really. In 1853, John Overton Choules stayed in Malta as part of an extended tour of Europe and the Mediterranean, and he left a fine record of his observations.

In his Rabat entry, he notes: “The poor Maltese live in worse huts than the Irish cabins (the merciless Irish famine which had taken its tragic toll between 1847 and 1852 was still fresh in everyone’s mind)... Here we found more beggars than at any other place, and they were wretched-looking ones too. Children without eyes or perhaps with only one were held up by the parents for alms. Eye diseases were awfully prevalent.” Malnutrition, and the fatal illnesses that never lag behind, accounted for so many deaths.

The Knights left Valletta a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen. Within a few years it had turned into a city ruled by parasites for paupers.

Concluded.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Bernadine Scicluna and Heritage Malta for allowing me to reproduce images from the National Collection and to Dr Henry Scicluna for useful suggestions.