Greece has had, and completed, a revolution! The Parisian Three
Days of July were not so brief nor so bloodless. The people and the soldiery of Athens went to the King in a body, and demanded a new Ministry, and the convocation of a National Con- vention, in order to a final arrangement of the constitution ; and. Cerno perforce consented. The Greeks have put their shoulder to the wheel, and surely no foreign intervention will be permitted to interfere with their work while it is so peaceably conducted. That the long-expected outbreak was not more disastrous, is not the merit of the " Protecting" Powers. When Greece first threw off the yoke of Turkey, the classic associations of the land made it a plaything for the dilettante Revolutionists of France and Eng- land; and they contrived to fritter away the occasion and hinder the practical understanding of the question then to be settled. The officials of the European Governments availed themselves of that confusion of ideas. They laboured under their own peculiar notions, and among them the notions that some "balance of power" was to be adjusted, and that Russia had some designs which were to be ingeniously neutralized. Greece itself was left out of their counsels. They must give it a King, however, and of course a Liberal-looking King : and so they chose the son of the King of Bavaria ; oddly imagining that the child of a pedant must be an intelligent youth; whereas it is now disputed whether OTMO is idiot or knave—qualities not utterly incompatible. Having saddled Greece with an alien government, they tied the hands of the people. Previously, England had helped, by the "untoward event" of Navarino, to cripple the real antagonist of Russia in that quarter. Thus, Turkey trampled on and Greece bound, it was not surprising that perpetual disorder and intrigue reigned in the ex- treme Southern point of Europe. Now Turkey's ills have been a little mitigated by the pacification of the Syrian and Egyptian provinces ; and Greece at length has emancipated itself. After enduring with singular patience the frustration of its first revolution, national restrictions of a humi- liating kind, and a foreign court billeted upon it, with costly sub- sidies, Greece has thrown off its shackles, and in doing so has done nothing to draw upon itself bad ulterior consequences. The settle- ment of its constitution will be jealously watched ; but it can on no just plea be interfered with. From the first, Greece belonged, in spite of its geographical position, to the class of newly-organized kingdoms a r Anglaise in Western Europe : the Sovereign first sought for it was the present King of the Belgians ; but the dis- creet LEOPOLD would not ventcre so far from familiar scenes. It now voluntarily retains its monarchy, and has only taken steps to secure Ministerial responsibility and national representation. What less would be justice ?
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