TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ROOT OF OUR FOREIGN TROUBLES.
Row many countries of Europe at the present moment are cursed with bad or inefficient kings ! In how many cases has our own Government become seripnsly embarrassed by entangling itself with the support of princes that neither merited our aid nor com- manded our sympathies. Nowhere, perhaps, has this trade of king-propping been more exposed by the fashionable process of the reductio ad absurdum than in Greece. We alluded in a re- cent number to the French and English army occupying Athens " to support the Government and keep down the King." In a very able letter printed in another page, our esteemed correspond- ent " E. A. F.', asks the meaning of !the expression which we used, and at the same time gives it a not unfair translation.
" The only meaning it conveys to me is, that the Government' of Greece—that is, I suppose, the Ministry, the Chambers, in a word Greece itself—both needs and deserves Western support ; and that the only real evil is the foreign Ring, whom Greece did not choose, but accepted as the choice of Europe. I very much doubt whether many Greeks would accept this statement of the evil ; I am sure that none would agree with you as to the remedy required. But surely, if such be the case, nothing can be con- ceived more honourable to Greece, more dishonourable to English, French, and Russian intermeddling."
There is little in our correspondent's letter with which we could differ. If we condemn the shortcomings of Greece, we must ad- mit that the Greeks have had the most deplorable circumstances to contend againat,—a bad King, a bad boundary, a bad neigh- bour, and a constitution suddenly to be formed on the rains left by an expelled and alien conqueror. Although there are many incidents in Turkey which give some promise for the future, it must be confessed that the Turks constitute as bad a neighbour for a Christian country in difficulties as could well be imagined. Properly speaking, Mussulman countries have no government : they have municipal institutions for certain local purposes, more or less reduced to a mere pretence ; and above all, they have an autocratic, theocratic, military monarch, who governs them for his own dignity and advantage and the glorification of the Pro- phet, without any real cooperation in state business for the be- nefit of the state. Without a regular government rooted in the people, as we understand it, but only a military occupation, the Turks do not feel the social, political, and international obliga- tions which are felt by other countries ; and the border of any Christian state, with such lodgers near it, must be liable to dis- turbance. Even Austria has found it necessary to establish her military frontier ; but Greece, which had to construct a future without a past, to create a finance without internal production, and to build up a government without a constituency or a king, was of all countries in Europe least qualified to grapple with such frontier difficulties.
The Powers of Europe resolved to make of Greece a constitu- tional kingdom—to establish a Bill of Rights upon the Acropolis ; and, to assist the Europeanized Greeks in working out a. national organization, they placed at the top of the kingdom a limited monarch. But as soon as any question arose of making a king, it became necessary to consult the interests of the king class. Nothing must be done in Greece which acts as a precedent prejudi- cial to the privileges of the class. You must not make a king out of unroyal materials ; hence you must limit your choice to the regal class itself. It was necessary that the man chosen should be such a one as would accommodate himself to the rule of a nation professing the Greek faith. A Bavarian prince was can- didate ; and, with the narrow choice, it was about as promising a selection as could be made. The man was an imbecile ; but that is not considered of much importance in king-making. Probably a large part of the difficulties which have been made for Greece have thus arisen in having an incompetent alien placed at the head of its government—a man who could thwart the measures of the best native statesmen and encourage the intrigues of the worst : and. England, who had become sponsor for the constitutional king- dom, shared the discredit caused by the very prince whom she reprobated.
The doctrine of nonintervention is most sound as it applies to this species of meddling. Incapable of identifying ourselves with all the feelings, views, and interests of a foreign country, we never can construct for it such a government as it might frame for itself ; and if we forced upon it a government of our own pat- tern, we became responsible for consequences that we did not in- tend or calculate. We might apply the Greek lesson to any part of our foreign relations : we shall find that the moral comes home to us, whether it is from Berlin, Vienna, or Madrid, and we might name some other countries. We are dragged into joint enterprises where we have neither interest nor sympathy, because our Government is supposed to be pledged to the duty of keeping up certain royal families and established forms of government. On the other hand, we are trammelled and checked in giving hearty cooperation to our real friends in Europe, because if we were to act in an English manner, say, for the support of Piedmont, of Holstein, or some other communities subject to important allies, we should be endangering the prospects of royal families whom we detest and governments which we despise. If we were settling questions with the Italians, we should come to a clear under- standing in Naples and Sicily : as it is, we threaten a cretin whom we fear to strike, make ourselves ridiculous, and positively injure our friends. The first step in Foreign-Policy Reform is to dis- continue this partnership in the trade of king-propping.
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