Whether the annexation of the island to the British Empire would have survived the deliberations of the Congress of Vienna is another question. One does not see why it should not have done so. We retained the Ionian Islands, less important in many respects, and with a population as turbulent, it seems, and as alien, as the Corsicans. The possession of Corsica by the Bourbons was very recent, and acquired by the most flagrant injustice. The French were scarcely more popular than the English with the national party; nor are they, according to the impression made during our Rambles, at the present day. The island had been offered to Napoleon, and might have become his island-empire. Had it even followed the fate of Genoa, its former mistress, and been assigned to Sardinia, there would be reason now for all friends of constitutional government to rejoice; and the Corsicans, essentially an Italian people, would more easily have amalgamated with their rulers.
However, these are mere speculations. Pascal Paoli's retirement left his native island no resource but submission to the French, and it became once more a department of France, one and undivided. On his return to England, Paoli had a small pension from the English Government, which he shared with other exiles from his own country. Little is known of the latter years of his life. He probably resumed, as far as his advanced years admitted, the habits he had formed during his former residence in London. He died there, on the 25th of February, 1807, at the age of eighty-two, and was interred in the burial-ground of Old St. Pancras. It is ground especially hallowed in the estimation of Roman Catholics; and if any reader should chance to turn his steps in that direction, he will be surprised to see what a large proportion of the monuments and gravestones in the vast area are inscribed to the memory of foreigners of all ranks, who, during a long course of years, have ended their days in London. The little antique church, too—one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in London—is well worth a visit, as an interesting specimen of Romanesque architecture, well restored a few years ago.
In the south-western corner of the churchyard, not far from the boundary wall, he will find a rather handsome tomb marking the spot in which the remains of the great Corsican are deposited. It bears on one face a long Latin inscription, said to have been penned by one of his countrymen, and the east slab bears a coronet, on what authority we are at a loss to conceive. So also the more humble monument of Theodore of Corsica at St. Anne's, Soho, is dignified with a shadowy crown. The mock king created Giacinto Paoli, Pascal's father, and one of his first ministers of state, a marquis or count. Can it be that, under that patent, Pascal Paoli assumed the insignia of nobility in his intercourse with the courtly circles of London? Was it a weakness in the man of the people, who, simple as his general habits were, had high breeding, and, as we learn from Boswell's gossip, was not entirely free from aristocratic tendencies,—nay, is said to have aspired to a royal crown?[27] Or is the coronet on his tomb an unauthorised device of the officious friends who are said to have spent 500_l._ in giving the exile a pompous funeral?