Britain's former title to Malta

I read with interest Dr Christopher Soler's review of The Mediterranean Journal of Human Rights (The Sunday Times, August 4, 11).

In the part dealing, very positively, with my study Human Rights Documentation in Malta (which is in effect a sort of second edition of a book of mine first published in 1966) there is, however, one point on which I feel tempted to write just a few words.

He says that I do not take up what he calls a "very important debatable point" concerning the nature of Britain's former title to Malta. But in fact not only do I do so, but I have also already done so both in my extensive publications on the Maltese Declaration of Rights of 1815 - incidentally, one of my pet research subjects - and in my book Constitutional Development of Malta under British Rule (1963), Selected Papers 1946-1989 (1990), The Maltese Constitution and Constitutional History since 1813 (1994, 2nd ed. 1997) and, more recently, Malta and Britain: The Early Constitutions (1996).

Furthermore, I have always taken the view that all meaningful debate on the subject may in effect be considered closed by a judgment of the Privy Council itself in the celebrated case of Sammut vs Strickland [1938] A.C. 678, which judicially acknowledged in very plain terms that the former title of the British Crown to Malta rested on cession (in this case based on the general consent of the inhabitants themselves). That title, Their Lordships said, was "the very reverse of a right of conquest".

Moreover, it is interesting to note that almost four decades before this landmark judgment the voluntary cession proposition in relation to Malta had also already been clearly and publicly accepted by the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), himself.

Indeed, I actually open my book Malta and Britain: The Early Constitutions with his memorable (though little known) words pronounced at the Palace in Valletta on November 7, 1900 (and two days later reproduced in the Daily Malta Chronicle) to the following effect: "Malta is in an unique position. She has not come to us in the ordinary way in which the possessions of the Crown have been acquired. She is not ours by right of the first discoverer; nor is she ours by right of conquest. Her independence, which was threatened by the great Napoleon, was maintained largely by the action of the Maltese themselves; and it is due, I think, to their clear perception of their position in the world that they were led, of their own accord, to offer their patrimony to the British Government and to come under the protection of the British Empire".

I am in fact pleased to have given the relief it deserves to this little known, but very significant, ministerial statement, which is also part of our glorious history.