Greece. A most indefinite idea would seem to prevail of the motives of this battle, and the results which ensued from it, if we were to judge from the shoutings and illuminations that attended its announcement in different places, as also from the tone of self-complacency in which it is still alluded to by many who had part in it. The treaty of 6th of July, 1827, led directly to that battle, and this treaty was the first step taken in regard to Greece by the combined courts of England, France, and Russia, who, as the preamble says, were "pene. trated with the necessity of putting an end to the bloody struggle, which, in giving up the Greek provinces and islands of the Archipelago to all the disorders of anarchy, brought constantly new shackles upon the commerce of the European states, and gave rise to piracies which not only exposed the subjects of the high-contracting parties to considerable losses, but farther required of them burdensome measures of surveillance and of repression." The preamble does not surely promise much for Greece; and the articles that follow give less hope, for they offer to mediate between Greece and Turkey on condition that the former shall pay an annual tribute, and shall recognise the Sultan, as a Seigneur Suzerain," or Lord Paramount. Another article was to the effect, that, if in one month from the publication of the treaty an armistice was not established and adhered to between the two contending parties, the high contracting powers declared to both Greek and Turk that they should interfere with all the means that circumstances might suggest, to prevent any collision, or hostile acts, and should also employ all their means to accomplish this object, without, at the same time, joining either contending party in the hostilities. And in pursuance of the terms of this treaty, the fleet of the allied powers, equally ready to exercise its force upon Turk or Greek, met and destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian fleet at Navarino. They had encountered this first, and therefore had destroyed it, though by the terms of the treaty they were as much bound to destroy the Greek fleet-if they could have caught it.

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In one of the conferences which ensued between the ministers of the allied powers at London, a copy of the protocol of which was communicated to the Greek Government, is the following curious passage, in which they say, without so much as asking the consent or opinion of Greece:-" It will be proposed to the Ottoman Porte, in the name of the three courts, that the Greeks shall pay to the Porte an annual tribute of 1,500,000 Turkish piastres." They also propose, still without consulting the Greeks, where the boundaries shall be fixed; and, farther, in regard to the government, declare that the ruler shall be a Christian prince, whose authority shall be hereditary; but "to mark distinctly the relation of vassalage in which Greece stands toward the Ottoman Empire, it is understood that beyond the payment of an annual tribute, each ruler of Greece, when the hereditary authority devolves upon him, shall receive his investiture from the Porte, and shall

pay to the Sultan a year of supplementary tribute." And these were the degrading conditions of servitude which, after a desperate and bloody struggle of seven years to secure her independence, Greece was about to have imposed upon her by her friends. The Greek government, through Capo d'Istrias, made an admirable reply to this protocol, hoping, as they said, that before the conditions of their servitude were permanently fixed, Greece herself might be allowed a small voice in their arrangement. The conference of which these noble propositions were the result took place on the 22d of March, 1829. It was agreed that they should be communicated to the Porte by the ambassadors of England and France: Russia declining to take part in this communication, although agreeing to abide by the results. She had another system of diplomacy. It was then that the Russian army, under Diebitsch, was on its march to Constantinople, and a few months after, while the two ambassadors were fruitlessly endeavoring to make themselves heard by the Porte, Russia alone, by her treaty of Adrianopole, forced from the Sultan a declaration that he would concur entirely in all the determinations that might be taken by the conference of the three powers at London, in regard to Greece. Copies of this declaration the Porte was obliged by Russia to communicate to the ambassadors of France and England at Constantinople, who transmitted them to London, so that at the next conference, held on the 3d of February, 1830, when the plenipotentiaries of the three powers appeared, each with a copy of that declaration of the Sultan which Russia had secured for them, the first clause with which they commenced was: "Greece shall form an independent state, and enjoy all the rights and privileges-political, administrative, and commercial-which pertain to a complete independence."

The limits of the new state were then defined, and the selection of a sovereign was deferred until a future day. It was not long after, that the second son of the King of Bavaria was chosen to be King of Greece; and the foundations were laid of that government, which has in many of its acts shown an imbecility and weakness which are only exceeded by the murmurs and execrations of those who are its subjects. The Greeks at the present day curse the time when they passed under Bavarian rule. At every street corner you hear their murmurs of discontent. A foreign officer in the service is looked upon with bitterest hatred. The king is ridiculed-the acts of his ministers despised. Foreigners are charged with consuming the substance of the state, and the government is charged with conniving at it. Much, far too much, of this is true, but the complaints of the lower classes among the Greeks must be weighed well.

"the

The French merchant at Athens was nearly right in his judgment, when he declared to Lord Byron that the modern Greeks were same discontented canaille as in the time of Themistocles." Byron VOL. VIII. NO. XXXIII.—SEPTEMBER, 1840. N

laughed at this; but he was at that moment a better poet than politician, and his ideas of the people about him were colored by the recollection of the glories, rather than of the crimes, of their ancestors. It would be difficult to find a more degraded set of beings, than exists among the lower orders of the modern Greeks-men full of low cunning, selfishness, vice, fraud, and revenge-ever ready to deceive, and prompt upon the slightest occasion to quarrel, either with their comrades or their rulers. It was a sensible remark by Rogers, the poet, that "nations are naturally patient and long suffering, and seldom rise in rebellion till they are so degraded by a bad government as to be almost incapable of a good one." Although the government of Greece is far from possessing the latter quality, yet the Greeks, or many of them, accustomed through so many ages to the bad rule of their masters, are incapable of appreciating what good they have; and the old quality of their ancestors, perpetual dissension, and wrangling with their chiefs, has certainly descended to them. Had there been any union during their long war, the struggle would have ended at a much earlier day; but selfishness and personal jealousy kept all apart, and Colocotroni, as also many other of the principal chiefs, fought, not so much to aid the general cause and to assist in establishing a good government, as to secure plunder and personal advantage to themselves.

Men who live by disorder and robbery look with an evil eye upon anything which confines them within rules; and many of the chiefs in the war having been klefts or mountain robbers, find with the establishment of a regular government their occupation gone. They cannot rob, and they therefore abuse the power which restrains them. The Greek pirates of the Archipelago, who find themselves captured if engaged in what had before been to them a lawful pursuit, abuse the government and the regulations which it has imposed for the establishment and security of an honest commerce. These are the uneducated. But Athens has among its rising population a large number of young men, the sons of rich Greek merchants of Constantinople and other parts of Turkey, who, when the massacre of their countrymen was commenced in these places, sent their children to Paris and other European cities to be educated. Those who left as infants are now returning, some to do good service to the state; but many of them only half educated, yet possessing a good deal of superficial information, added to a most profound estimate of their own importance and political knowledge. A "young men's whig committee of safety" in Boston could hardly be more confident in their perfect ability to regulate the machine of state, than are these young Athenians; neither could they be much more elegant and classical in their abuse of the government which is over them. There are many men who, without having any particular merit themselves, censure the government from envy of those who hold offices under it; there are others who, having sacrificed all their property for the country, claims

that the profits of its places should not be thrown away upon foreigners; and there are also among the modern Greeks men of good minds and brilliant talents, who look with scarce concealed distrust and ill-feeling at the ruinous course taken by the new king and his advisers.

And now let us come to the government, and see whether there is foundation for all these complaints. At the time of the accession of King Otho, a loan of sixty millions of francs was effected for the benefit of the new monarchy then just coming into action. The king came to the throne a minor. A regency was formed in Bavaria, of men perfectly ignorant of the Greek character-ignorant of the steps necessary to pursue to bring forward a new country-ignorant, as their acts have shown, of the commonest principles of political economy. Otho brought with him 3,500 Bavarian troops; the knowledge that there were sixty millions to be disposed of brought hither a greater number of Bavarian office hunters—and Greece, the new kingdom, appeared for a time like a German Botany Bay. Many friends of the regency were to be provided with places; to do this, new and useless offices were created, all of which were given to foreigners. Instead of adopting a responsible system of government, one in which the officers should be few, and the labor in consequence quickly performed-a system particularly well adapted in its working to the Greeks, who from their quick intelligence seize readily upon all the points of a difficult case-the old exploded plan of the German states was adopted, where the interminable system of reports from one officer to another, and the total absence of decision on the part of all, are perhaps rendered in some degree necessary by the general slowness of comprehension and dulness of the people. But the regency did not know or seemed to disregard the facts, that here this necessity did not prevail, and that the simpler the machinery of government the surer were its operations-the fewer the wheels employed, the less was the expense-and the less, too, the danger of a derangement in the parts. The consequence of this wretched system of reports is, that it is impossible to have business accomplished at any of the ministries without an almost endless delay. One officer's province ceases, your case is not ended; he makes a report, another takes it up, reports, and hands it over to a third to make still another report; and thus does it continue, until a ream of expensive stamped paper may be consumed in reports upon the simplest affair. This wretched system is now fastened upon the Greeks; so badly does it work that the accumulation of papers becomes in many cases too great to be examined, and the government of Greece, which started fresh almost yesterday, has hardly commenced its business of four years back. This is the fact. You will ask why this plan was adopted. Partly from ignorance of a better method on the part of those sent to manage Greece, and partly to increase the revenue from

stamped paper, and to give places, from the large number of officers that it requires, to a greater quantity of foreign retainers; and these same motives have probably induced its continuance.*

No wiser plan was adopted for the internal policy of the country; but in order to secure an immediate revenue, the most destructive impositions were laid upon agriculture, more discouraging even than the uncertain demands of the old Turkish pachas. This is the worst part of the mismanagement in Greece; it was commenced under the regency, and Otho, who has been five years in full power, has done nothing to alter or improve the old system. A Greek farmer must give up one-tenth of his crops, and must carry them to the capital of the province in which he lives. To do this, he is forced to climb mountains, or cross beds of rivers, frequently for fifteen or twenty miles, carrying his produce with him upon mules. The expense of this expedition to pay his taxes, will in many cases more than consume the year's profits. The Greek is shrewd enough soon to discover this, and he prefers to smoke his pipe at home and do nothing, rather than labor when he cannot reap the advantage.

I saw myself a few days since, at one of the small Greek sea-ports, a specimen of the working of this wretched system in another way. Ship-builders were engaged in putting up two small vessels, and on my inquiring how they found the wood, which I saw growing at a little distance, for building, I was surprised by the reply, that the wood they used was not cut there, but was bought of the Turks and brought over from the eastern side of the Archipelago, the taxes of the government rendering their own wood too expensive. And this I found on examination to be true. The duty on foreign timber is only six per cent. on its value, while a man for cutting his own timber, upon his own ground, must pay fifteen per cent. on its value to the Government. And thus, by this inconceivable policy, not only are the natural productions of the country rendered unavailable, but her money, of which she has already too little, is drawn from her, to be placed in the hands of her old enemies the Turks.

* A case in point occurs to me; it is that of George Wilson, an American sailor, who came out to this country with the frigate built by the Greeks in New York. He served as gunner on board during the whole war, and afterward until the ship was burned. The Hellas took many prizes, which were regularly condemned, and the proper portions awarded to the captors, among whom was Wilson. But he has never been paid. Ten years have gone by, and although the justice of Wilson's claim fully allowed, yet he is put off from day to day, by a promise that his case will soon be examined and reported on. While poor Wilson is starving, the Bavarian who scratches his head over his petition is filling himself with the bread which belongs to another. While in the Greek service, Wilson took a wife, and not having any other employment, since the close of the war, has made a little Leonidas, Epaminondas, Miltiades, and Aristides. Were it not for these he would, he says, drop his claim, and quit so ungrateful a place. And yet the Greeks who know Wilson's case sympathize heartily with him, but the working of a bad government can never be depended upon.