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HISTORY OF MALTA.

This committee withdrew to a separate apartment to deli-berate on the different affairs to be brought before the chapter;but, lest these sixteen commanders should not be sufficientlyacquainted with the real interests of the order, and perhapsfrom the idea that resolutions might be taken contrary to thegrand-master’s wishes, his solicitor, with the vice-chancellorand secretary of the treasury, were admitted into this privateassembly, though without the privilege of voting; the sixteenalone having the right of regulating, ordaining, and judging,definitively (without appeal) of all affairs referred to them bythe general chapter. These great assemblies never lasted morethan a fortnight, and if at the expiration of that time any bu-siness remained unsettled, it was left to be determined by othercommissaries, who were termed the council of reservation.

Independently of this occasional council, there were al-ways four others in Malta, Avhich supplied the place of thegeneral chapter, viz. the common, the complete, the secret,and the criminal councils^

The common council consisted of the grand-master, theconventual bailiffs, the knights dignified with the grand crossresiding at the time in Malta, and the proxies of the differentlanguages. All disputes relative to receptions, pensions, com-manderies, dignities, and other subjects arising from bullsgranted by the order, were decided in this council, which dif-fered very little from the complete one, except indeed that inthe latter two ancient knights were added from each language;