Gibraltar, or in the camp of Sir John Colborne in Canada, as of establishing it in Malta.  A free press in Malta in the Italian language is an absurdity.  Of the hundred thousand individuals who compose the population of Malta, three-fourths at least speak nothing but the Maltese dialect, and do not understand the Italian language.  Of the one hundred thousand inhabitants of the island, at least three-fourths can neither read nor write.  What advantages, then, can accrue to the people of Malta from the establishment of a free press?  We do not want to teach our English sailors and soldiers to understand Italian.  A free press will find no readers among them either.  Who, then, is it for?  These gentlemen say, that, unless the government support a free press in Malta, it cannot exist of itself, and they suggest an expense of L800 a year in its favour.  They have done nothing more than this that I am aware of since their appointment, and it is plain, that the savings spoken of by the noble baron as having been effected by their recommendation are completely swallowed up by the project of a free press.  My lords, I cannot help thinking that it is wholly unnecessary and greatly unbecoming of the government to form such an establishment, of such a description, in such a place as Malta; and the more particularly, as the object for which it is made, must be both of a dangerous tendency to this country, and fraught with evil to others.  The free press which they propose, is to be conducted, not by foreign Italians, but by Maltese, subjects of her majesty, enjoying the same privileges as we do.  Now, what does this mean?  It means that the licence to do wrong is unlimited.  If it were conducted by foreign Italians, you could have a check upon them if they acted in such a manner as would tend to compromise us with our neighbours—­you could send them out of the island—­you could prevent their doing injury in that manner by various ways.  But here you have no such check—­you have no check at all—­your free press in that respect is uncontrollable.  If the free press chooses to preach up insurrection in Italy from its den in Malta, you have no power of preventing it.  Were the conductors foreign Italians you could lay your hand on them at once, and dispose of them as aliens; but you cannot do that with the Maltese subjects, enjoying the same right and possessing the same freedom as ourselves.  I did hope, that we should have been cured by this time of our experiments on exciting insurrection in the other countries of Europe—­in the dominions of neighbouring princes—­in the territories of our allies.  I did think that we had received a sufficient lesson in these matters to last us a long time, even for ever, in the results which have taken place through such interference in Portugal, Spain, Italy—­ay, and in Canada too—­and that they had put an end to our dangerous mania for exciting insurrection in foreign countries.  Such, my lords, I assert is the object of a free press in Malta—­to excite insurrection