GLANCE AT THE GREAT POWERS. 



diplomacy, and protected as it were by three powers, or rather by 

 three distinct interests. The Greek people have risen victorious from 

 a bloody struggle that created the sympathy of the civilized world ; 

 but this victory has been dearly purchased. A soil strewed with 

 ruins nearly a whole generation exterminated ! such are the results 

 of a war prolonged beyond measure by the egotism of European 

 diplomacy. In fact, there no longer remains but the skeleton of a 

 nation independent it is true, but without laws, without govern- 

 ment, without administration, without every thing, in fact, but arms, 

 still reeking, and which her citizens have, as is too often the case, 

 drawn in the service of anarchy after having made so noble a use of 

 them against tyranny. First, a kind of goverment at once permanent 

 and provisional was formed, at the head of which was placed a 

 Greek who had become a Russian an ingenious combination, 

 destined to nationalize the bastinado under which it was intended to 

 curb that haughty and independent population. Such was, in fact, 

 the administration of Capo d'Istria. Force kept down the turbulent 

 spirit of the Palikari; but under this European Pacha, nothing 

 changed, nothing prospered, and soon the president himself fell a 

 victim to his own despotism. Now, a new arrangement is tried. We 

 shall not examine the strangeness of that conception that sends 

 to reign at Athens, over the soldiers of Canaris and Coloco- 

 troni, a German child, who possessed no other titles to his crown 

 than some insipid odes written by his father in favour of the cause 

 of Greece. We shall confine ourselves solely to point out the 

 consequences of this choice to the two constitutional governments, 

 parties in the arrangement, which has thus delivered over to the des- 

 potic powers of the continent the new throne and its regency an 

 enormous fault, which the affairs of the East have gloriously brought 

 to light : for it is necessary to understand, that in the present situa- 

 tion of the Ottoman Porte, the Greek question presents itself under a 

 new aspect. Connected, as she now is, with the great interests of the 

 balance of power among the states of Europe, it is no longer a phi- 

 lanthropical, but a political question, aye, and one of the first mag- 

 nitude; for at the moment when we see Russia assuming over 

 the Turkish empire a protectorate pregnant with danger to the whole 

 of Europe, at a moment when the last bonds of our ancient alliance 

 with Turkey are severed, it behoves this government in particular to 

 have an eye on Greece. She is, we admit, nothing as yet; but with 

 the frontier that has been given to her by the last treaty, she may 

 become something, and she is in fact in the actual negotiations in an 

 important diplomatic position. To withdraw from her affairs to 

 throw away all ulterior influence upon the political direction of her 

 government, will be to add to a fault already committed one still 

 more glaring. 



As a European question, what is now passing at Constantinople 

 must arrest the attention of every observer. For our part, when we 

 heard that an accommodation had been brought about between the 

 Sultan and the Egyptian Pacha, we placed no reliance on the news 

 the conditions of the treaty being in too direct opposition to the 

 views of Russia to give it even the shadow of probability. The 



