SECONDARY PUNISHMENTS FOR NATIONS.
STATESMEN have been perplexed for years, in fact, ever since 1815, when the epoch of statesmen's wars may be said to have ended, by the difficulty of devising a secondary punishment for nations. Every now and then a regular Government does something or leaves something undone in a way which calls for some mark of the general reprobation of the world more severe than a sharp despatch, yet less severe and inconvenient than a declaration of war. Now it is a King who sets civilization at defiance by his cruelties, and then a Republic which plunders all foreigners under pretext of raising a forced loan ; here a State which repudiates its debts under circumstances which make repudiation piracy, and there a monarchy so out of joint that it cannot protect the lives even of diplomatists. Sometimes, as in a recent case in Spain, municipal law is stretched till it sanctions international law- lessness, and sometimes, though unfrequently, a deliberate but not injurious insult is offered by one nation to another. In none of these cases is it now the custom to plunge reck- lessly into war, yet in none is silence either convenient or dignified, and in none have statesmen discovered a method of transmuting bitter words into effective action without the movement of fleets and armies. The method of Secondary Punishment which was so popular in the eighteenth cen- tury, a war of tariffs, has been abandoned, as inflict- ing injury not on the criminal, but on the executioner ; Cromwell's idea of inflicting a fine and levying it by a sort of distraint on national vessels has become obsolete ; and Mr. Gladstone's scheme of sentencing the offender to expulsion from the European family did not succeed even in the extreme case to which it was applied. Ferdinand of Naples died in his bed a reigning Sovereign. A blockade is war, and in many cases might not succeed, while the remedy which the Three Powers, France, Britain, and Spain, tried to apply in the case of Mexico, developed in a few weeks into a simple and most unsatisfactory scheme of conquest. One plan which might occasionally succeed, the expulsion of all citizens of the offend- ing State, is opposed to modern ideas of expediency, and is besides morally indefensible, the penalty falling, in the first instance, on the very people who cannot have done the wrong ; while a second, a demand for the dismissal of offending politi- cians, though very often tried, has never been found to produce either satisfaction or security. The imagination, in fact, is taxed in such cases to discover a mode of action which shall be neither an ingratitude nor a brutality, and statesmen, after the first burst of indignation, are too apt to relapse into discontented and querulous calm.
The difficulty of peacefully remedying international wrong has been brought into strong relief by the debate in the Lords on Monday on the massacre at Marathon. Lord Carnarvon in his natural passion of indignation made far too much of the Greek refusal to grant an amnesty, indeed, overlooked the moral aspect of that point altogether. It may be quite true that the precise plea put forward, the sanctity of the Constitu- tion, is weak,—that the Ministry might have asked for an Act, or have granted the amnesty and applied for a Bill of Indemnity ; but it is also true that to ask such a grace, and still more to demand it, was to secure impunity to crime -because it had been successful, to make the suppression of brigandage impossible, and to tell all the brigands of Greece that if they would be but villanous enough, Western Europe would be on their side. Apart from this, however, Lord Car- narvon had a most formidable case. His speech proves almost to demonstration that in moving the troops on the 20th April -the Greek Government committed an act of treachery, possibly prompted by sinister motives, certainly characterized by a want of decent regard for the safety of diplomatists en- dangered by their intrigues, their boastfulness in declaring Attica safe and ridiculing the application for escort, and their long, and in the matter of brigandage their wilful, misgovern- ment. The public had almost forgotten what Lord Carnarvon brought out with such force, that the brigands descended into their dangerous position in the plain on the faith of the pledge from the Greek Ministry ; that even when there, Mr. Noel, the remarkable English settler of Eubcea, whom both Government and brigands trust, only demanded a delay of a few hours ; that all the evidence is opposed to the Greek assertion that the massacre preceded the attack, and that Colonel Theagenis in ordering it was truly playing a game in which he knew that English lives were the counters and success almost impossible. Add to these facts another only suspected, but terribly probable—that the explanation of the original capture, of the breach of faith, and of the attack by the soldiers was a political intrigue—and a better case for the infliction of secondary punishment could scarcely be imagined. Yet even Lord Carnarvon, familiar as he is with history, con- vinced as he is of his own case, burning as he is with the suppressed passion which dictated what we fear will prove the imprudent remark about the Greek King—who behaved like a generous and impulsive schoolboy, no better and no worse— had no definite course of action to suggest. He de- manded, indeed, the trial of all officials concerned or suspected ; but the demand only shows that the difficulty which embartasses the Government hampers also irresponsible intellects. Suppose the Greek Ministry, or any member of it, or the Opposition, or any member of it, morally guilty in the highest degree, what are they or is he to be tried for ? For breaking faith ? That is a crime against us which may deserve the severest international punishment, but how is it an offence against municipal law ? General Soutzo, whether his motives were good or bad, was within his legal power in ordering troops to pursue brigands, and can, as an individual) only be accused of an error in policy. Colonel Theagtinis is not liable to the tribunals for misjudging the time for an attack, or if he exceeded instructions, is responsible only to his own superiors. It is doubtful whether mere information conveyed to the brigands involved legal complicity in their acts, and quite certain that no trustworthy evidence of such treachery, if it existed, will be or can be obtained. There have been, we believe, cases—we recollect vaguely an occur- rence of the kind in Persia—in which a civilized power, certain of the complicity of officials in a murderous outrage, has demanded and received their heads in satisfaction ; but Lord Carnarvon would be the first to repudiate such a departure from the rules of civilized and, we may add, of just procedure. There is no evidence against M. Zaimis and his colleagues of anything except carelessness about human life, which may give us a sufficient case for an international demand, but can give us no rights against individuals.
Are we, then, to submit silently to an outrage which, if unpunished, will for years lower our character throughout the Mediterranean? Certainly not. We heartily agree with Mr. Gladstone that the crime ought to be made an event in the history of Greece, but it must be so made by. action upon the Government, and not upon individuals, whose responsibility, however grave or however slight, we have no just means of enforcing ; and we believe the longer the matter is studied, the more convinced will the Government be that complete redress, in the interest alike of Greece, of our own character, and of civilization, can be obtained only by the old means, direct international compulsion. Brigandage ought to be made to cease in Greece, that is the "event " which ought to follow the massacre of our countrymen, and any measure having that end distinctly in view will, we believe, receive the support of the whole country. If the suspension of the Greek Constitution will secure it,—well, civilization must precede constitutions. There is a rumour that this course has been recommended by one of the Protecting Powers ; it is evident, on a careful comparison of Mr. Gladstone's answer to Sir R. Palmer, with Lord Clarendon's reply to Lord Carnarvon, that it has been at all events discussed by English Ministers, and it has one or two arguments in its favour. It would be a real punishment to the place-hunters and intrigants of Athens, whose hungry ambition is described on all hands as the root of evil in Athens; and it might be a great gain to Greece, if the Powers are aware of a man who would make a competent Vizier. On the other hand, there may be no such man, the King himself is no Cresar, and a dictatorship imposed from without must commence its career with a terrible load of unpopularity. Short, however, of that expedient,—a treaty signed by the Protecting Powers and Greece creating a Dictatorship for, say, five years,—there is, we greatly fear, no remedy except the ancient one, the demand of a material guarantee that brigandage do cease. We gave the Ionian Islands to a civilized power ; what if we resume the responsibility so prematurely surrendered ?
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