12 JUNE 1830, Page 9

THE PRESS.

THE MINISTRY.

MORNING CHRONICLE—It IS some time since we stated that the truce was at an end, and that a formidable opposition had begun to show itself. In the smooth sea Ministers managed pretty well ; but it is clear enough that the present pilots are unable to navigate the vessel of the State now that the storm has arisen. Nothing could be more miserable than Mr. Goulburn's display in the debate on the South American Mis- sions, except Sir Robert Peers petulance on the Forgery question. These men are quite incapable of managing the House of Commons : we have not the least idea that they will carry Lord Lyndhurst's law projects to-morrow evening ; and they may reckon on a severe struggle in the Committee of Supply upon Friday. Should the Administration give way, it will not be forgotten by the historian of their achievements that they attempted to bestow on the sons of two members of the Ca- binet pensions which the House of Commons refused to ratify, and on the brother of another allowances which escaped by a bare majority the like ignominious reprobation. Whatever may be said of the purity and disinterestedness of public men, the names of Duntlas, Bathurst, and Gordon cannot be quoted as those of public servants more highly esteemed by a grateful country than by themselves. (June 9.) BRIGHTON GAZETTE—We are now enabled to state that the amal- gamation which was expected to take place between the Whigs and Tories has been found impracticable, although it is more than likely that on many subjects there will be a cordial co-operation sometimes in opposition to the Government, checking them in wrong and mischievous measures; and, on other occasions, in the promotion of objects which both parties may deem advantageous to the country. On the Greek question, for instance, the Tories will, as a body, support the Whigs ; and in other respects the results of this arrangement will be im. mediately manifest. Under all circumstances we are not sure that this result is not the best for the country, as well as the most honourable for parties. The Tories will be henceforth found acting in concert, in- stead of being scattered, as they have lately been, uselessly wasting their strength in desultory movements. They will now form a strong body of observation, acting in such force as to restore the importance which they had almost frittered away ; and will be in a condition, at all events, to check the attempts of any unconstitutional Government. MORNING Ha—Mr. Sheridan's celebrated sarcasm upon the Whigs, that they " built a wall to run their own heads against," has been in some measure realized by Sir Robert Peel in the case of his For- gery Bill. What earthly occasion there could be to render that a party question, and issue pressing Treasury circulars, only as preludes to a de- feat, we have not the smallest conception. Besides, Sir Robert Peel must know, we should imagine, that the Government is not so over- burdened with strength as to make it advisable that it should be called forth upon doubtful occasions; and yet here is a defeat sustained after every effort has in vain been tried to secure a victory. These are mortis fying matters, and are felt, we have no doubt, by the head of the Ad- ministration more keenly than his Grace would have the world believe.. Indeed the Duke is well known to be unusually sensitive on the subject of these untoward divisions. The other night, in the House of Lords, on a question whether the East Retford or a Divorce Bill should take the precedence, a division ensued, in which the Duke and five other Cabinet Ministers were left in a minority. Though the affair was in no respect a Ministerial one, his Grace's mortification upon the occasion is repre- sented to have been marked and extreme, and shows how feelingly alive those are who are used to give the word of .command, when called upont in their turn to obey. But all these sources of mortification the Duke

of Wellington has brought upon himself. No man was ever placed at the head of affairs with more decided means of commanding popularity than the Duke. No man ever brought to office so high a previous repu- tation. Why is the Duke not the popular Minister he might have been? Why, as a general election approaches, do even the willing satellites of any Administration shrink from supporting him ? Shall we tell his Grace P—It is because he has not shown that decision in the Cabinet which the world had witnessed from him in the field.

THE GREEK BOUNDARIES.

GLOBE—The importance which is attributed by some persons in this

country to the affairs of Greece seems to us to be very disproportionate to the influence which that country can ever exercise on the affairs of Europe. While the question at issue in Greece was whether a Christian people who struggled to be relieved from their Mahometan oppressors should be exterminated or rendered independent, the event was looked to with merited concern. Now that question has been determined : the Greeks are secure; they have ample territory, compared with their num- bers, to till and inhabit; and the discussions as to boundary-lines shrink into insignificance when we call to mind that Greece is a small pro- vince torn from a feeble and declining empire, and protected by all the great powers of Europe. The question of the boundaries of Greece de- rives importance from the false supposition under which it is treated,

viz., that a state of war between the Greeks and Turks is to be renewed, and to be habitual. But how happens it that an occasion has ever arisen for this question to be agitated ? From this very cause—that the Powers of Europe have chosen to say that the Greeks and Turks shall not make war .on one another. The most sanguinary war which raged between them (if that could be called a war,iin which the Turks were massacreing a people deprived of all power to resist), was composed by an exertion trifling in cchnparison of the strength of those who made it, though irresistible by those to whom it was applied--putveris exiui jactu—by the expendi- ture of a little powder at Navarino. The same sanction continues ; the new state and its old masters are prohibited by superior power from violating the peace ; and it is quite clear that, unless the force of Turkey grow to such a degree as to enable it to set Russia at defiance, the Turks will not rashly undertake a war of aggression against Greece, which would expose them to another invasion from Russia, as well as to the enmity of France and England. if, on the other hand, from the growing feebleness of the Ottoman Government, the Albanian Chiefs violate its orders, and make incursions into Greece, there will be an immediate ground for claiming from the Porte the territory in question. The Allies may, and no doubt will, immediately say to the Sultan—" You cannot keep the strip of territory which we conceded to you with safety to yourself or to the Greeks. We must now have a bet- ter-defined frontier, which we abstained from demanding on the suppo- sition that you would be able to keep your subjects in order—a supposi. tion which experience has falsified." We have, we confess, a very strong impression that the boundaryl-ine was fixed in ignorance of the real nature of the country; and that if General Church's report had been before them, no rational European diplomatists would have made the Aspropottunos the frontier. Our idea that Lord Aberdeen in par- ticular may not have managed the matter with the utmost possible dis- cretion, is not weakened by the language of some of the papers which passed between him and Prince Leopold. It was injudicious and offen- sive, surely, in a communication with a man who was then considered the head of an independent state, to treat the sovereign elect as a tool in the hands of others. If the fact were well ascertained, it was scarcely decent, and could not be useful, to assert it ; and it is quite clear, tool, from a comparison of their letters, that if the Prince was a he was a tool much too sharp for Lord Aberdeen to play with. But Lord Aberdeen's mistake, if he has committed any, on the question of the boundary, has been shared by the Ministers of the other Powers. Another cause of the importance attributed to the present state of the Greek question—not by the people, to whom it is a :natter of great indifference, but by some politicians—is to be found in the vague notions propagated of the state and capabilities of Greece. It is not within the reach of probability that Greece ever can become an important country. The importance of Greece ceased when other countries, of greater territorial extent, began to attain similar proficiency in arts and disci- pline, and it would be much more reasonable to expect to see Babylon restored to its condition in the time of Semiramis, than to expect to find in Greece (within any limits now thought of) a first-rate European power. Indeed, such a change would be the most melancholy of all prospects for humanity, for it would pre-suppose not only the advance of Greece, but the relapse of all Europe, except that small corner of it, into the barbarism from which it has emerged. Other small countries, as well as Greece, have enjoyed political importance ; but that importance has necessarily arisen, not from their own wise institutions, but from The misgovernment of neighbouring states. It is a mark of the general advance of Europe, that although the superiority of the institutions of some states gives them power more than proportioned to their extent, no very small state enjoys any political importance, or seems to have a chance of obtaining it.