THE RUMOURS FROM ATHENS.
ARE Monarchs people in business, and therefore entitled to retire, or are they sentries ? We confess we are tempted to lose patience with the growing prevalence of the former idea, which threatens to destroy all the utility that lingers in a mode of government which but for that utility would be pronounced irrational. The value of a Throne in a Constitu- tional State is the stability and permanence it lends to the political organism, the security it affords that among the in- cessant changes caused by the fluctuations of modern opinion the traditions of the Government will be kept unbroken. Premiers pass, but the dynasty remains. Ministries disappear, but the Head of the State is always visible. Parties are revolutionised, but the country remains quiet, because the pivot of power, be it real or nominal, is unalterably fixed. This, the first, perhaps the only, advantage of the Kingship—an ad- vantage, we admit, so inestimable that it outweighs most of the mischiefs caused by the inability of a nation to select its head—disappears at once if dynasties are permitted to resign, if a King can retire because he is bored by reigning, if a Sovereign can at any moment compel his people to reopen all the fundamental questions of their national life. The duty of a King, as it seems to us, and especially of a King who has voluntarily accepted a throne, is to stay King, at all events till his subjects tell him to go ; to be what he promised to be, —the one fixed datum in the political calculation. Louis Philippe was not an admirable person, and his government was not honest, but his flight broke up a Parliamentary re'gime out of which anything might have been developed. Nobody perhaps ever was placed in a more unhappy position than King Amadeo, but his abdication was the signal of endless calamities to Spain, which might have been averted had he remained. This George of Denmark, King of the Greeks, is, we dare say, very discontented with his lot, which is for the present to be King without the power of effecting any good, and we can scarcely wonder that he is annoyed into uttering threats of abdication. Like all other Kings, except Ferdinand of Naples, he probably detests brigandage, and brigand chiefs rule all the rural districts of his realm. He dislikes incessant changes of policy, and his advisers are altered about twice a year. He would like to widen his boundaries and he is further from the possession of Thessaly than the Bavarian Otho was forty years ago. Above all, he would like to be believed by his caste to be successful, and he cannot succeed at all, cannot keep Athens in decent order, can- not prevent the Ionian Islands from falling out of the rank as orderly and prosperous communities to which the hard, un- sympathetic, but just rule of the British Government had raised them. We can imagine that all the good man, as well as all the natural man, in him revolts from his position; but still we cannot but believe that his duty is to remain, and die of chagrin, if needs must, in the performance of his task. He was not put there to be comfortable, but to do sentry-duty; and till the word comes to go off, either from his people or from Europe, his duty is to go on pacing up and down that most wearisome walk. The results of his abdication may be endless. He will not leave his wife in Athens to rule, for that would be to make Greece a Russian province ; he cannot leave a child to rule, for that would be to ensure anarchy ; and he cannot appoint a Regent, for there is no man in Greece who could hold the post in safety for a week. If he goes, he must leave the Greeks either to choose a new King or to set up a Republic. In the former case, Athens will once more be the scene of a furious and dangerous intrigue, every power in Europe advising, cajoling, bribing, and threatening, in order to secure either the candidate it most approves or the candidate who will do least mischief, till at last, by some process of ex- cluding the fittest, a " safe " Sovereign is selected, and the political class of Greece left to recommence its regular work of making all men think another revolution unavoidable. In the latter case, we shall, we fear, have, after scenes of anarchy and bloodshed, a series of dictators, sometimes raised by the troops, sometimes seated by the "brigands," but always and inevitably possessed of the power at any moment of exploding the mine in Eastern Europe. The Greeks have a right to a Republic, if they want one, but we cannot conceal from ourselves that a Republic in Athens might be a source of danger to the whole world. It does not matter who the ruler of Greece is, but if he is not a King and bound by the personal rules, fears, and hopes which control Kings, he can always stir the Eastern Question, always create an insurrection in Turkey, always compel the Czars to choose between beginning a dangerous war and allowing a Mohammedan power to crush Christians belonging to the Orthodox Rite. He can, in plainer words, create a situation in which war would be either inevitable, or seem so inevitable that the whole West would be in agitation. No average citizen in England cares about Greece, not even, as the Times says, that most unfortunate of beings, the Greek bondholder ; nobody knows the names of any Greek Ministry, and nobody believes that a street riot in Athens may affect the prosperity of a whole generation. But we venture to say that if a Re- public were proclaimed in Greece there is not a Foreign Office in Europe which would not be in dismay, which would not know intuitively that a certain unknown quantity had appeared in the grand diplomatic calculation, which would not fidget and fret for accurate intelligence from the dusty little capital. Even the British Foreign Office, if it knew nothing, would feel as if it wished it knew a little. A nut is a little piece of iron, not worth much by weight, and not interesting to look at; but when a nut falls out of a suspension bridge, engineers are uneasy until the defect is repaired. King George is a nut just now, and we very greatly question his moral right to unscrew himself. His people have not told him to go. Europe is telling him to stay. Nobody is going to kill him. His character is not degraded because his advisers are self-seekers ; his responsibility to his people is limited by his power ; and as to his responsibility to the world, it is not half as great while he stays as it will be if he retreats. We dare say Copenhagen would be pleasanter, or St. Petersburg, if he has saved any money ; but that is no justification for an act the con- sequences of which, both to the Greeks and to the rest of man- kind, it is so impossible to foresee. A "leap in the dark" may be very good fun, but a throne is a high place to leap from, and royal robes do not form the costume an acrobat would choose.
It is very useless for outside's, especially since Mr. Finhty's
death deprived them of the only reporter on Greek facts who was intelligible to the West, to give an opinion on the remedy . for the state of affairs in Greece, but two or three data would appear to be ascertained. One is, that Europe would perceive an immense risk in allowing the establishment of a Greek Republic. Another is, that there is no man likely to be selected as King who would be sure to be better than King George, who at least has the advantages of English and Russian friendship, of ten years' possession, and of much disagreeable experience. A third is, that the Executive, as now organised in Athens, either cannot or will not perform the functions for which first of all it exists. An Executive which cannot main- tain decent external order, which cannot make its safe conducts respected, or secure to a Judge independence on the Bench, is an Executive which fails, and needs to be remodelled; and it is this remodelling which, as it seems to us, the protecting Powers would be justified in demanding. There would be no wisdom in a coup d'e?at, for unless it were supported by a foreign army, a coup d'e?at would fail. There would be little use in a dictatorship, for there is no trustworthy power to sup- port it, and the evils to be met cannot be subdued by any violent or dramatic course of action. But it is not yet certain that if the King's hands were strengthened in a moderate, con- stitutional way, he either could not or would not secure as much order as would give his country time to see if it could not produce statesmen who could govern. Suppose the Cham- ber, which now treats Ministries as children treat their flowers, perpetually pulling them up to see how their roots are getting on, were confined for a season to legislation, interpellation, and re- monstrance, and the King allowed for ten years to discipline his own army, form his own police, appoint his own judges, and main- tain public security, is it so certain that he would fail as to justify another Greek Revolution ? King George is not incompetent, and if he is, he might accept a Minister who would not be, and who, being irremovable, except by himself, might at least try the experiment under fair conditions. The Greeks, be their political class never so corrupt, are only men after all, and there never were men yet whom a moderately competent statesman, with an organised force at his command strong enough to prevent overt resistance, could not in a very few years reduce to endurable order. The conditions of public security are not wanting in Greece. The laws there are as good as the laws anywhere else. There is revenue enough to pay a small army able to overcome any overt resistance, except in the capital, which cannot move if the Protecting Powers forbid. There are brave men enough to fill up the army. There are officials enough ready to obey the King if he can dismiss them from their posts. All that is wanted is permission to use these resources, without being perpetually interfered with by party leaders who are seeking nothing but a momentary triumph over their adversaries, who are not controlled by opinion, and who know that governing well would not extend their term of power five minutes. In a country where all political feeling is subordinated to self-interest, the King, if he is to govern well, needs the guarantees conceded to an American President, and we do not see that if they were granted liberty would be at an end in Greece. The King would still be bound by the laws, no new taxes would be imposed without Parliamentary consent, and the standing Army could not be greatly increased in number. If the reform were honestly worked, Greece would be more free than Prussia in 1864, and would have at least as much liberty as her children as yet know how to manage. The experiment might fail, but it is at least as hopeful as another revolution, and could be secured by the Protecting Powers without rousing the hundred dangerous questions, any one of them enough to give cause for war, which, whenever the fate of Greece seems undecided, are sure to rise to the top. A war for influence in Greece means a war for geographical position, complicated by a war of races and a religious war, and no patience and no effort is thrown away which tends even to postpone to the future so terrible a calamity.
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