Eject them? You might as well propose to
uproot Atlas or Ararat. Not only can they never be displaced, but from
year to year, by every art, good or evil, they consolidate their position.
That done, they begin to send for their relations. One by one new
Corsicans arrive from over the sea, each forming a centre in his turn,
where he sits tight, with a pertinacious solidarity that borders on the
superhuman.
Cave-hunting savages at heart, and enemy to every man save their own blood
relations, the Corsicans are the nightmare of the Arabs on account of
their irreclaimable avarice and brutality. They would flay the native
alive, if they dared, and sell his skin for boot-leather. They can play at
being _plus arabes que les arabes_, and then, if the game goes against
them, they invoke their rights of French citizenship in the grand manner.
The Frenchman knows it all; he regrets that such creatures should be his
own compatriots--regrets, maybe, that he is not possessed of the same
primordial pushfulness and insensibility; and shrugs his shoulders in
civilized despair.
As for the Maltese, they would be all very well if--if they were not
British subjects.
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