King Theodore made great exertions for the general elevation of the country. He established manufactories of arms, of salt, of cloth; he endeavoured to introduce animation into trade, to induce foreigners to settle in the island, by offering them commercial privileges, and, by encouraging privateering, to keep the Genoese cruisers in check. The Corsican national flag was green and yellow, and bore the motto: _In te Domine speravi_. Theodore had also struck his own coins--gold, silver, and copper. These coins showed on the obverse a shield wreathed with laurel, and above it a crown with the initials, T. R.; on the reverse were the words: _Pro bono et libertate_. On the Continent, King Theodore's money was bought up by the curious for thirty times its value. But all this was of little avail; the promised help did not come, the people began to murmur. The king was continually announcing the immediate appearance of a friendly fleet; the friendly fleet never appeared, because its promise was a fabrication. The murmurs growing louder, Theodore assembled a Parliament on the 2d of September, in Casacconi; here he declared that he would lay down his crown, if the expected help did not appear by the end of October, or that he would then go himself to the Continent to hasten its appearance. He was in the same desperate position in which, as the story goes, Columbus was, when the land he had announced would not appear. On the dissolution of the Parliament, which, at the proposal of the king, had agreed to a new measure of finance--a tax upon property, Theodore mounted his horse, and went to view his kingdom on the other side the mountains. This region had been the principal seat of the Corsican seigniors, and the old aristocratic feeling was still strong there. Luca Ornano received the monarch with a deputation of the principal gentlemen, and conducted him in festal procession to Sartene. Here Theodore fell upon the princely idea of founding a new order of knighthood; it was a politic idea, and, in fact, we observe, in general, that the German baron and Corsican king knows how to conduct himself in a politic manner, as well as other upstarts of greater dimensions who have preceded and followed him. The name of the new order was The Order of the Liberation (_della Liberazione_). The king was grand-master, and named the cavaliers. It is said that in less than two months the Order numbered more than four hundred members, and that upwards of a fourth of these were foreigners, who sought the honour of membership, either for the mere singularity of the thing, or to indicate their good wishes for the brave Corsicans. The membership was dear, for it had been enacted that every cavalier should pay a thousand scudi as entry-money, from which he was to draw an annuity of ten per cent. for life. The Order, then, in its best sense, was an honour awarded in payment for a loan--a financial speculation. During