Under the Aragonese, Malta, as regards local affairs, was administered bya Universitd or municipal commonwealth with wide and indefinite powers, including the election of its officers, Capitan di Verga, Jurats, &c. The minutes of the " Consiglio Popolare " of this period are preserved, showing it had no legislative power; this was vested in the king, and was exercised despotically in the interests of the Crown.
Under this act the western territory which France had claimed, extending as far as the Mississippi and south to the Ohio, was included with Canada in what was called the Province of Quebec. This vast territory was to be governed despotically from Quebec; the Roman Catholic church was given its old privileges in Canada; and the French civil law was established permanently side by side with the English criminal law.
Ptolemais, indeed, enjoyed all the ordinary forms of self-government, but Alexandria was governed despotically by royal officials.
Hazm the Abbasids were a Persian dynasty which destroyed the old tribal system of the Arabs and ruled despotically as Chosroes had done.
Costa Cabral, who became count of Thomar in 1845, ruled despotically, despite many insurrections, until May 1846, when a coalition of Miguelites, Septembrists and Chartist malcontents drove him into exile.
