16 DECEMBER 1854, Page 31

"WHAT ARE THE GREEKS?" NO. II.

4th December 1854.

Sin—I think it better to send off the remainder of what I have to say in answer to the above question at once, that it may either take its chance be- fore Parliament meets or lie by, according to your discretion and the capa- city of your columns.

The one ever ready answer to all appeals on behalf of Greek emancipation is, " Look at liberated Greece. See how the enthusiasm of Europe was wasted. You emancipate Greece, and produce the worst governed state in Europe. Surely no sane person will carry any further an experiment which has so egregiously failed.' Now this answer is plausible, and something more; it is prima facie conclusive : but I believe, nevertheless, that it does not go to the root of the matter.

In attempting to argue this point, I will assume the present condition of the Greek kingdom and the Government of King Otho to be as bad as its worst enemies represent it. I have not been there—I hope I some day may —to judge for myself; and the accounts of those who have are by no means of a uniform blackness. Still it is safest for my purpose to assume it at the worst. I will suppose, then, that the Greek kingdom is a mere mockery of constitutional freedom ; that a centralized bureaucratic system renders political liberty nugatory, while it fails to protect life and property ; that a small half-civilized country is burdened with a court and a capital after the pattern of those of the great Western nations ; that commerce and agricul- ture do not flourish ; that the foreign policy of the Government is at once weak, perfidious, and aggressive. What I assert is, that all this does not prove Greece to be incapable or unworthy of freedom. This position I undertake to maintain iu the face of the gloomiest picture that has been drawn ; if Greece is really better off than I have described it, so much the better for me.

The great evil, whether unavoidable or otherwise, of our present elaborate system of diplomacy and international intercourse is, that no people is now ever left to the free natural development of its own resources and its own national character. This happens in two ways. First, diplomatists are too apt to map out a boundary and to arrange a dynasty for some newly-risen nation, according to their own cut-and-dried technical ideas, with very little reference either to the wishes or to the necessities of the people themselves. They seem to think that human and political nature will necessarily conform to their arbitrary arrangements ; as if the signature of a note or a protocol by unconcerned and distant parties at once altered both the circumstances and the duties of those who are most deeply concerned, but who are never consulted about it. Secondly, the leaders of the emancipated or renovated nation are too apt to copy the manners and institutions of other nations, in- stead of labouring to develop something from the basis of their own national character and position. Probably, neither of these tendencies can ever be wholly got rid of where a complicated system of internatioual intercourse exists ; but they are tendencies against which all ou whom the responsibility lies should be most carefully on their guard. Both early and mediaeval times had in this respect a vast advantage over our own. Nations were either left to themselves, or else attacked vi et armis. Greece, Rome, Florence, Switzerland, England, and Holland, developed their liberties in peace or won them at the sword's point from armed enemies. When the earliest of all the struggles between Austria and freedom had crowned the Alpine shepherds with immortal honour, it did not occur to the Emperor of Constantinople, the King of Castile, and the Republic of Novo- gored, to arrange that Uri and Schwitz might form a monarchy under a prince of the blood-royal of Poland, but that Unterwalden must retain its allegiance to its lawful sovereigns, while no civilized potentate could be a party to such iniquity as the annexation of Lucerne. But England, France, and Russia, decree that Peloponnesus and Attica, Boaotia and Phthiotis, might be graciously permitted to exchange an Ottoman for a Bavarian mas- ter, but that Crete and Chios, Epirus and Chalcidice, must still remain in their old bondage, and that no man must venture to disturb an arrangement agreed on by the Great Powers of Europe. Still less did it occur to Stauf- filch, Furst, and Melchthal to draw up a constitution for the Helvetic Re- public in servile imitation of the English Magna Carta or of the Florentine Ordinances of Justice. But the legislators, native and foreign, who devised an administrative system, first for despotic, then for constitutional Greece

dreamed only of copying the most approved models of nineteenth-century Europe, instead of considering what the experience of the past, the circum- stances of the present, the very physical features of the country, ought to have overwhelmingly impressed upon them. Greece and Turkey alike labour to become civilized by aping the manners and institutions of other nations. The result is a mere varnish of modern and Western usages over an Oriental or a mediaeval substance.

The old grievance of the Ottoman power in Europe, the grievance which still exists in a somewhat mitigated form, was that several nations were kept in bondage by an alien caste, the main ground of such bondage being dif- ference in religion. The remedy surely was either to win real equality for all races and religions within the empire, or, failing that, to expel that par- ticular race and religion which formed the obstacle to a fair settlement. Neither of these processes need have been accomplished at once : it was not by a sudden blow that the Macedonian was expelled from Peloponnesus or the Austrian from Helvetia. It would have been only natural that each race, each province, almost each valley or island, should have conquered its freedom for itself, till the sway of the ruler of Constantinople was for a third time bounded by the walls of the Imperial city. Peloponnesus alone, whether as an independent state, or a tributary province like Servia, might have been accepted as a happy instalment towards the future liberation of all Romania. But Peloponnesus, Attica, Bceotia, one or two other provinces, and a few is- lands, constituted, as a final measure, into a kingdom of Greece, and required to it down quietly in friendly relations with the Ottoman empire, is one of those absurdities which could only have occurred to men who, like heralds, lawyers, and diplomatists, confound the technicalities of their own arbitrary science with the grand principles of human nature. The boundary fixed upon for the new kingdom has always appeared to me simply inexplicable. I know no reason why the Greek race alone should have been thought of, and the wrongs of the Slavonian and the Bulgarian forgotten. I know still less reason why only a small portion of the Greek race should have been emancipated. The Cretan and the Peloponnesian alike revolted against the Sultan : if the revolt was justifiable, both deserved liberty ; if unjustifiable, both deserved chastisement. No mortal man can tell me why Peloponnesus should be liberated and Crete driven back into bondage. No mortal man can prove to me that a grievous wrong was not in- flicted either upon the Ottoman Sultan or upon the Cretan people. The Cretan population is wholly Greek and two-thirds Christian ; the population of Chalcidice is also wholly Greek, and, I believe, wholly Christian. Yet these regions still remain Turkish provinces, while large Albanian districts form part of the Greek kingdom.

Had the object been to emancipate the Greek nation, the Greek kingdom must have formed a narrow strip round the whole ./Egman. Had it been to emancipate old Hellas in the narrower sense, if Epirus and Macedonia were excluded, yet at least Ambracia and Larissa might have fairly claimed deliver- ance. Had any marked physical barrier been required, the limit should either have stopped short at (Eta or have been extended to Olympus. No reason, ethnological, geographical, or historical, can possibly be assigned for the boundary actually fixed upon. Now all history witnesses that the natural impulse of a nation in the posi-

tion of liberated Greece is towards conquest and aggression ; conquest and aggression, which may often assume the milder form of extending its own liberty to others. When the cities of Achaia had thrown off the Mace- donian yoke, they gladly welcomed Sicyon and Corinth and Megalopolis as partners in their freedom. Uri, Schwitz, and Unterwalden lent their aid to any district or city that was prepared to defy the power of Austria. A people once confined, as English colonies, to the coast of the At- lantic, is now spreading, as the North American Republic. over the whole of that vast continent. But to Greece, diplomatic maxims suited only for nations in a wholly different state forbid the exercise of this natural impulse. The principles of the nineteenth century are pressed down upon a people in the condition of four or five centuries earlier. It is not in human nature that the Greek of .itolia or Phthiotis should sit still, while his Epirot or Pelasgiot brother remains in bondage. But arbitrary arrangements to which he has never consented forbid his doing so in the same open way as his Achman or Helvetian predecessor. He cannot strike a blow for his kinsman without violating the faith of treaties and the settled order of Europe. A people which, as an openly advancing and conquering internal might have attained

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to greatness, is compelled to waste its energies in nternal eornmotions or in irregular and treacherous aggressions on its neighbours. Otho, who might have won the title of conqueror, obtains only that of intriguer. The Palikar, cut off from his natural vocation of soldier, is driven to find em- ployment for his superfluous vigour in domestic or foreign brigandage. Whether nineteenth-century Europe could rightly or possibly have tolerated independent Greece in its natural and I firmly believe its healthful tenden- cies, I do not profess to decide. But I do know, that to expect liberated Greeee to sit down quietly as the neighbour and friend of its old oppressor, is to expect what, as Sir Archibald Alison would say, may happen when human nature is other than it now is, but not till then.

Look, too, at the constitution of the kingdom. Its change from despotic to nominally constitutional government I care little for ; in either case it re- mains a centralized bureaucracy under a foreign sovereign. Now all history tells me that a people winning its independence naturally adopts as its con- stitution the form of a Federal Republic. Instances two thousand years apart from each other all preach the same lesson. Achaia, Switzerland, Holland, America, all followed the same invariable impulse. But the name of Repub- lic or Federation is odious in the eyes of royal contracting parties and of their lordly diplomatic representatives : therefore every lesson of experience was to he despised ; Greece must have a King ; a King too, not one of her own , liberators, an Artaxerxes of Persia, or a Frederick of Sicily, but a child of the exclusive royal caste, sought oat in a land whose name was probably unknown to the majority of his future subjects. The very physical construction of the country points to the local independence of every vale and isle and head- land, as its natural condition and its past history point to this same local independence as the strongest instinct of the people. As I once before pointed out, the very stupidity and barbarism of the Turkish dominion had preserved rude local institutions which ought to have been taken as the groundwork— I should say of an actual federal constitution, but at all events of munici- pality carried to as full a development as is consistent with the existence of a central sovereignty. Instead either of Cape d'Istria or of the Bavarian Regency, Mr. Laing and M. de Tecqueville should have been sent to teach the Greeks what true liberty is. Had they looked back to the pages of ancient history, they would have found a real lesson ready written for them. Let the modern G:eek hold his peace about Marathon and Salamis, till he has learned to profit by the really practical example supplied by the career of Aratus and Philopcemen. The more glorious times of Pericles and Epami- nondas had shown that a system of perfectly independent cities, while it brings the human intellect to the highest pitch, requires an expenditure of energy too violent to be lasting. The Achrean League combined the inde- pendence of each state with a strong central power in the united nation : it procured for a large portion of Greece a considerable period of happiness, if not of glory ; and it would doubtless have been still more effectual had it arisen before the times of national decay.

Such a federal or strongly municipal government would have gratified the local instincts of the people, and served as an education for the higher

constitutional government. It would also have allowed the admission of many outlying portions of the nation, which could not possibly find a place in a continuous kingdom. On the other band, it might also have admitted those settlers of the races who are found scattered here and there within the limits of the territory where the majority is Greek. The Albanian of Epirus, the Slavonian of Trenarus, the Wallach of Pindus, even the Jew of Thesis- lonica and the orderly agricultural Iconian Turk of Thessaly, might form members of a confederation far more easily than they could of an immediate sovereignty. The Swiss Confederation comprises members of various reli- gions, races, and languages : how different are their relations from those occasioned by similar diversities in the Empires of Austria and Turkey ! I hold, then, that the failure of the Greek kingdom, constituted as it was, is no conclusive proof that Grecian freedom might not have been, and still may not be, established under happier auspices. I do not deny that in any case there would have been many difficulties to contend with. It is possible that the general pcsition of the Greek nation, afflicted alike by irrelevant associations of an irrecoverable past, and by proximity to na- tions whose modern examples are equally irrelevant, might have proved fatal to any scheme. But this I do say, that the Greek nation has never had a fair chance : possibly any scheme might have failed, but that which was adopted was infallibly sure to fail. Let us not condemn a people because they have not flourished in an unnatural position. Let us not blame them till they have had a fairer and freer field allowed them for their energies, and hive failed in that field. It is vain to expect that the institutions of Bavaria or France, even those of Norway or England, would necessarily be conducive to the prosperity of a people whose whole position, past or present, presents hardly a point of resemblance. Above all, let diplomatists of either nation, or of all nations put together, use what palaver they will, independent Greece can never be the friendly neighbour of an empire which continues to hold myriads of her brethren in bondage. So long as the intruding Ottoman occupies the throne from which Justinian gave his laws and from which Heraclius marched forth to victory—so long as

"Turbans' still pollute Sophia's shrine,

And Greece her very altars eyes in vain"—

so long will " Death to the barbarians !" be the war-cry of every patriotic tongue, as much now as when the heroes of Mesolonghi slave their way through the ranks of the trembling Infidels ; tirrEITS will be the innate impulse of every Grecian bosom, as when Rigas bowed his martyred head beneath the lifted steel of his barbarian murderers.

I have now done with the Greeks, but I have still one small matter with the Turks. In your note on my-former letter, you imply that I have used the phrase "Turk" laxly in speaking of the runaways of Balaklava. Now, who were they ? I really do not know. A correspondent of yours says, " Don't abuse the Turks; they were Arabs who ran away ; send some of the brave Turks who fought at Silistria, and you will see the difference." A correspondent of the Chronicle says, " Let us get rid of these dmitardl Turks, and have some of the brave _Egyptians who fought at Silistria. Which is one to believe ? Teen a private friend informs use that they were " Byzantine tailors in uniform " ; which does not throw much light on their

ethnology.

The fact is, that " Turk," like " Greek," is, in the sense in which we ordinarily use it, not an ethnological term at all. The Turkish race is indeed the most extended in the world ; but those whom we commonly call Turks, the Osmanlis, are, like the Greeks, a merely artificial nation, marked out by language and religion, not by blood. When we remem- ber that for centuries the best portion of the army and a large pro- portion of the civil service was wholly recruited from the "tribute-children" of the various subject races—while any man might always be elevated to the ruling caste " by the repetition of a sentence and the loss of a fore- skin "—M hen we add the presence of mothers of every nation of the old world—we shall see that the " Turk " is as much a mongrel as the Greek. Very often the practical Turk may be an ethnological Greek, the practical Greek an ethnological Turk : vie oi8Lv el 1-6 Kip Fiv lirTi gwritavelv, Td Ka-reaviiv de Kite ; One word more. I see the alliance with Austria is signed. I see also, that the Morning Chronicle, scoffing at Kossuth's speech, tells us that " platitudes about oppressed nationalities may be laughed at and forgotten." It is as well to be open and candid. It is then, after all, against the nation- alities of Poland, Hungary, Greece, and Italy, that England leads the cru- sade of "European freedom," in company with Louis Napoleon, Francis Joseph, and the Grand Turk.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, E. A. F.

• Fez-caps, perhaps, in reformed Stamboul.