pendence of the Judiciary appears to be placed beyond question; of itself an inestimable advantage. The higher Clergy live in harmony with the State, the lower with the people; and the correspondence of our Foreign Office would show instances of their liberal feeling, such as are likely to exercise a beneficial influence upon Eastern Christendom at large. Their union with the people at large makes them an important element of strength to the social fabric. It was indeed an union cemented by suffering. On Easter Day, in April, 1821, the Patriarch Gregorios* was arrested in his robes, after divine service, and hanged at the gate of his own palace in Constantinople. After three days he was cut down, and his body delivered to a rabble of low Jews, who dragged it through the streets, and threw it into the sea. Gordon enumerates about twenty Bishops, who were massacred or executed by the Turks in the early stages of the Revolution.† As for the priests, they suffered everywhere, and first of all.‡

The statistical record, moreover, of the progress of Greece, drawn from public sources, is far from being wholly unsatisfactory.

The population, which stood in 1834 at 650,000, had risen in 1870 to 1,238,000; that is to say, it had nearly doubled in thirty-six years; a more rapid rate of increase than that of Great Britain, and far beyond the ordinary European rate. With the Ionian Islands, Greece must now contain a number of souls considerably beyond a million and a half.

In 1830, Greece had 110 schools, with 9,249 scholars. In 1860, it had 752 schools, with 52,860 scholars. The University of Athens, which in 1837 had 52 students, in 1866 could show 1,182.

The revenue, which was £275,000 in 1833, was £518,000 in 1845, and £1,283,000 in 1873; or probably about a million, after allowing for the Ionian Islands.

For the shipping and trade of Greece, the figures, though imperfect, are not unsatisfactory. The number of Greek seamen, augmented by the addition of the Ionian Islands, was in 1871 no less than 35,000. But before that annexation they were 24,000: or almost three times as many, in proportion to population, as those of the United Kingdom. The tonnage is over 400,000 for 1871. Before the union with the Ionian Islands, the imports and exports averaged for 1853-7, £1,546,000; but for 1858-62, £2,885,000. For 1867-71 they had risen to £4,662,000. That portion of Greek trade which is carried on with the United Kingdom, and which was in 1861 £923,000, had risen in 1871 to £2,332,000.

Neither, then, in a material, nor in a political and social view, is there any ground to regret the intervention of the Powers on behalf of Greece.

Gordon, i. 187. Finlay, i. 230. Tricoupi, Hellenikè Epanastasis, vol. i. pp. 102-107, chap. vi. † Gordon, i. 187, 188, 190, 194, 306. Ibid. i. 192.

I will now resume the argument on the future of the Hellenic subjects of the Porte.

The title of the Armenians, and of the Hellenic provinces of the Ottoman Empire, to have their case considered at the approaching Conference, is not, as I have already stated, analogous to that of the Slavonic countries. For these have exhibited their claim in the most effective form, by rising against the Sultan, and by defeating, in two of them at least, his efforts to pacify them through desolation. Perhaps, in reason, the identity of grievance might be taken for granted; but the Hellenes may justly be put to the proof. Will their locus standi so far be admitted at the Conference, as to allow them the opportunity of making good their case? Without prejudice to the general merits, it is plain that this admission cannot be withheld, if they are able to sustain, by adequate proof, the statements which were boldly assevered at the meeting in the Pnyx, but for which the evidence has not been disclosed to the world. Let us suppose, now, the question to stand for decision, at a meeting of the Conference, whether its care is to extend to any other than the Slavonic provinces. I will proceed to state some reasons, which might well give bias to an Englishman in favour of the affirmative; and especially to an Englishman slightly tinctured with Russophobia, or the kindred, but more advanced, disease of Turcomania.

In the first place, it is the judgment of the Ottoman Government that the changes it may be required to make shall extend to all the provinces of the empire. It will not be easy for that Government to claim that, when the immediate and primary case of the Slavs has been disposed of, the door shall be closed against others, whose equality of title she has herself asserted. Next as to Russia. It may be doubted whether her interests will render her anxious to widen the field of interposition. What generosity may prompt her to attempt, I dare not at present conjecture; but, as I believe she cannot always be exempt from the selfishness of which we ought sometimes to be very conscious in ourselves, so it has been well proved that the Emperor and his people are open, certainly not less than we are, to the generous emotion which has recently, and I believe effectively, thrilled through this island.

With some very limited exceptions on the Austrian frontier, I apprehend it to be beyond doubt, that the hopes of the Christians in European Turkey have been directed either to this country or to Russia. As between the two, there are a variety of circumstances which might conceivably direct their hopes either to the one or to the other. It is too often and too hastily assumed, that they all work in the same line, the line leading towards Russia. My own belief is that these populations would all prefer aid from England, if it were to be had: all, even including Slavs and Wallachs.

It is true that they both are united to Russia by a double tie; the Slavs by those of religion and of race, the Wallachs by the tie of religion and perhaps of recollection; for, though Russia may have used them in her own interest as tools against the Porte, it was to her power that they owed those local immunities, which put them in a condition to become, after the Treaty of Paris, a free State. But both even of these races have other ties with England: first, in the possession or desire of popular institutions; secondly, in that they have not to fear from her, even as possible, either absorption or aggression. But the Wallachs are happily out of the question; and as to the Slavs, I feel that it is vain to pursue the discussion with special reference to England, after the course which affairs have taken in 1875 and 1876.

The present inquiry is as to the Hellenic races; and here the matter stands very differently. Only in a single point have they sympathies which would lead them by preference towards Russia: it is the point of religion. Were these countries within the Latin Church, community of religion might greatly weigh, for it would imply some antagonism to all other forms of Christianity. Within the Greek Church this is not so, because it is constituted on the original principle of local distribution, rejects the doctrine and practice of supremacy, and claims no jurisdiction beyond its own borders. Mr. Finlay speaks of the strong leaning of the Ionian population to Russia. This may have been true, and with very good reason for it, in the time of Sir Thomas Maitland; or in the Island which, according to Gordon,* "groaned for years under the iron rod of a wretch, whose odious tyranny would have disgraced a Turkish Pacha." But, by degrees, the treatment of the islanders by the English was greatly altered for the better. Eighteen years ago, I was engaged in a mission to the Islands, and became convinced that the notion of the prevalence of Russian leanings there was altogether visionary; that the desire of the people was to be Greeks in polity, as they were Greeks in blood and feeling, but that as long as they could not be politically Greeks they preferred an association with the British Crown to any other association whatsoever.

Since that time events most important in their bearing on the present inquiry have occurred in the department of ecclesiastical affairs. If, on the score of religion, there was then a qualified affinity with Russia, there is now a positive antagonism. The four or five millions of Bulgarians, who were then in their traditional intercommunion with the patriarchal see of Constantinople, are now severed from it by an ecclesiastical schism; and of that schism Russia is believed by the Hellenic race to have been, through its Ambassador, General Ignatieff, the most active and powerful fomentor. And this although it has been alleged that, * Vol. i. p. 318.

a master of the finesse of diplomacy, and knowing the blind hostility of Ali Pacha to everything proposed or supported by Russia, he put the Porte on the side of the Bulgarians by advisedly taking himself the side of the Patriarch.*

It is remarkable that so little has been said or heard on this important subject in the West. The reason is that its direct consequences have been purely negative. The hundred eyes and hundred hands of the Curia were directed from Rome to the Balkan Peninsula, in the hope of profiting by the quarrel; but in vain. It is hardily asserted that M. Bourée, the French Ambassador, supported with all the influence, if not with the wealth, of his country, the Papal operations; but in vain.† The eighty or ninety millions of the Oriental Communions, though partially severed in communion, and even to a very small extent in doctrine, among themselves, form an united and impregnable phalanx as against the claims of the Papacy.

In the original outbreak of the Bulgarian quarrel, we may recognize on the part of that people a genuine aspiration of nationality. Under colour of obtaining more learned and competent men than could be found among an uninstructed population, a practice had grown up, dating from about a century and a half ago, of appointing Greek Fanariote bishops to Bulgarian sees. The demand of Bulgaria was, to take into its own hands the appointment of its Bishops, and of a chief Prelate with the title of Exarch. If I am correctly informed, it happened in the course of this controversy, as of many others, that right changed sides as it went on. The Patriarch offered that the Church of Bulgaria, like that of Russia and of Greece, should become an independent national Church; but stipulated that, like them, it should be limited within local boundaries. On the Bulgarian side it was contended that wherever there were Bulgarians, constituting a local majority, the jurisdiction of the national Church should extend. This claim directly traverses the principle of local distribution, on which the Oriental Church claims, in conformity with the Ante-Nicene Church, to be founded. The claim was refused. Excommunication followed. The Russian Church declined to support the sentence of the See of Constantinople. Another of the Patriarchs took the same view, and was deposed. Russia, having the means in her power, took an active part against the successor who was appointed. In a word, although the religion of the Bulgarians remains in doctrine and rites precisely what it was before, the tranquil East has been thrown into the abyss of ecclesiastical disturbance; and with a chief share in producing such a state of things the Russian influence is, whether justly or unjustly, credited. It is even stated that by confiscating * Attention aux Balkans: Bucharest, 1876, p. 14. † Ibid. p. 15.

*

the proceeds of estates in Bessarabia, Russia has deprived the Patriarch, and the Greek establishments in Roumelia, of a large part of their means of subsistence; not to mention the crowning allegation of this fierce Hellenizing adversary, which is that she desires to define an ecclesiastical Bulgaria reaching beyond the Balkans, in order that she may thus herself eventually control the mountain passes.

Now it is with Constantinople that the whole Hellenic race feels itself in matters of religion to be inseparably associated; it is in the strictest sense, notwithstanding the undue subserviency to the overweening pressure of the Porte which has at times and in certain respects lowered the dignity of that great See, an ecclesiastical centre to the Hellenic race, which resents every disparagement inflicted on it. So far therefore as religion is concerned, it is at this moment a ground of real and strong revulsion from Russia, not of attraction to it.

No full and accurate view of the questions connected with the Christian subjects of Turkey can be obtained without taking into count the dualism that subsists among them, as between Hellene and Slav. They are sharers in a common religion, and this bond of sympathy is primary. They are also sharers in their sufferings; but they are to some extent rivals in their dreams. Between them, they conceive themselves to have the heirship of Eastern Europe, and have some tendency to clash about the inheritance before the day of possession has arrived. The Slav is stronger in numbers: the Hellene feels that, during the long and rough night of the great calamity, the remaining genius of his race supplied the only lamps of light which flickered in the storm and in the gloom. As between Hellene and Turk, the Czar has borne the aspect of a champion: as between Hellene and Slav, he has rather the position of a possible adversary; and all the circumstances of the present moment accentuate and sharpen the outlines of that position. Only when the place of advocate has been altogether vacant, has the Hellenic race been disposed to give to Russia that position. The prospect of Russian predominance in the Levant is just as oppressive to their rising hopes, as that of a Greek Empire at Constantinople is distasteful even to the mighty and wideruling Emperor of all the Russias.†

I am arguing for others, rather than myself. I find abundant reasons, altogether apart from those which I have last advanced, for desiring that the opportunity of the present crisis should be used, after meeting its primary necessities, to act more broadly on ideas such as were unquestionably and strongly held by Lord

* Attention aux Balkans, p. 21.

The Greek conception of Russian policy is pointedly expressed by Tricoupi, in reference to the project of 1823. Hellenikè Epanastasis, iii. 189, chap. xii. Also iii. 263