The Revolution Comes to Italy 587
ence in the island which both the French monarchy and the French Revolution
had denied him, and which the Protestant Viceroy dismissed as an intrigue. With-
out further research, it is hardly possible to say who the less prominent supporters
of the regime were. Probably Sir Gilbert Elliot’s diagnosis was correct. Everything
depended, he reported, on how the bulk of the Corsican people read the future. If
they thought that the British would certainly stay, they would accept them; if they
thought that the British were in the island only temporarily, they would be unwill-
ing or afraid to commit themselves.
The legislation enacted by the Viceroy and Parliament was of course designed
for the benefit of the country as understood by those who now governed it. Some
of it suggests the less gentle features of British law at the time. Criminal law was
severe, with burglary punishable by twelve years in the galleys, except that the
stealing of sacred objects in church was punished by twenty, in the galleys. There
was also the war to carry on, and France to be defeated; the British Mediterranean
fleet was short 2,000 men, and Corsican seamen became subject to impressment
into the Royal Navy.
Some legislation was in the strict sense simply reactionary, undoing what had
been done during the Revolution. Property confiscated from the church was re-
turned to it, though with provision for compensation to the new owners. Church
tithes were reimposed. Violence against the Catholic religion was made punishable
by death. The Revolutionary legislation against primogeniture and entails (fidecom-
messi) was repealed. The Revolutionary principle of removing education from
church control was repudiated; a university and secondary schools were to be set
up, subject to inspection by the bishops. The salt tax of the late French monarchy
was restored; it was now to be much heavier than before 1789, since the new re-
gime showed a preference for indirect taxation.
Other enactments were political, intended to protect the persons now in power
from those who might overthrow them. Here the Viceroy tried to exercise re-
straint. He conceived of himself as a reasonable Englishman among temperamen-
tal Latins, and he repeatedly advised against vengefulness. He underestimated the
internal discord within the country. He could not believe that respectable Corsi-
cans opposed the new order, since he never met any such people. He tried to learn,
and made tours about the island, but he was hardly in a position to be in close
touch with the full range of opinion.
Resistance against the Anglo- Corsican kingdom soon developed an indigenous
republican underground, committed to the overthrow of the regime and to ending
the union with England. So far as Corsica had any professional or business people,
they seem to have looked with favor on the French Revolution. Of five leaders of
the underground whose names are known, three were doctors. The gentry also
proved increasingly disappointing to Sir Gilbert. Where at first he had seen “re-
markably good specimens” of a country gentleman, he found them, a year later, not
“beyond the pitch of a good yeoman in England, or of the humblest squires of our
remote counties.”^43 The basis of a social and political system like that of England
seemed to be lacking.
43 Ibid., II, 258, 306.