"A great misfortune for Corsica," says the same historian, "is the vast number of those accursed machines of arquebuses." The Genoese Government drew a considerable revenue from the sale of licenses to carry these. "There are," remarks Filippini, "more than seven thousand licenses at present issued; and, besides, many carry fire-arms without any license, and especially in the mountains, where you see nothing but bands of twenty and thirty men, or more, all armed with arquebuses. These licenses bring seven thousand lire out of poor, miserable Corsica every year; for every new governor that comes annuls the licenses of his predecessor, in order forthwith to confirm them afresh. But the buying of the fire-arms is the worst. For you will find no Corsican so poor that he has not his gun--in value at least from five to six scudi, besides the outlay for powder and ball; and those that have no money sell their vineyard, their chestnuts, or other possessions, that they may be able to buy one, as if it were impossible to exist unless they did so. In truth, it is astonishing, for the greater part of these people have not a coat upon their back that is worth a half scudo, and in their houses nothing to eat; and yet they hold themselves for disgraced, if they appear beside their neighbours without a gun. And hence it comes that the vineyards and the fields are no longer under cultivation, and lie useless, and overgrown with brushwood, and the owners are compelled to betake themselves to highway robbery and crime; and if they find no convenient opportunity for this, then they violently make opportunity for themselves, in order to deprive those who go quietly about their business, and support their poor families, of their oxen, their kine, and other cattle. From all this arises such calamity, that the pursuit of agriculture is quite vanished out of Corsica, though it was the sole means of support the people had--the only kind of industry still left to these islanders. They who live in such a mischievous manner, hinder the others from doing so well as they might be disposed to do: and the evil does not end here; for we hear every day of murders done now in one village, now in another, because of the easiness with which life can be taken by means of the arquebuses. For formerly, when such weapons were not in use, when foes met upon the streets, if the one was two or three times stronger than the other, an attack was not ventured. But now-a-days, if a man has some trifling quarrel with another, although perhaps with a different sort of weapon he would not dare to look him in the face, he lies down behind a bush, and without the least scruple murders him, just as you shoot down a wild beast, and nobody cares anything about it afterwards; for justice dares not intermeddle. Moreover, the Corsicans have come to handle their pieces so skilfully, that I pray God may shield us from war; for their enemies will have to be upon their guard, because from