were carried to their greatest height. The number of Bavarians in Greece was never so great as during the period of his supremacy in the regency, and political corruption and jobbing reached their acme in every department, during his administration as chancellor. In order to strengthen his position, many Greeks were admitted to share the profits of his system, so that his administration undoubtedly acquired a certain degree of sinister popularity. The finances of Greece were, however, kept under the control of Bavarians, and the real finance minister could not speak a word of Greek, and hardly two of French. A council of state was also formed. This institution was undoubtedly a step in the right direction, though it was made into the mud; for it must be observed, that this council was composed, not of men capable of being of any use as counsellors, but only of those whom it was of some importance to gain as supporters. Their votes were secured by large salaries, and by the power which the Count retained in his own hands of removing them at pleasure, if they displayed constitutional sympathies. An absolute government can never avoid resorting to intimidation. Attempts were made to restrain the liberty of the press, and a disposition was manifested to commence a persecution of the orthodox, or, as it was called-to render it unpopular-the Russian party. The preacher Germanos, who was editor of a relig ious newspaper at Athens, was exiled by Count Armansperg to a monastery in Skiathos, and in this way, his newspaper was suppressed. Sir Edmund Lyons, a captain in the British navy, and a man of popular manners, was sent by Lord Palmerston as British minister, with instructions to support the system of the Count to the utmost. Sir Edmund Lyons has continued to represent Great Britain ever since at the court of Athens, and has taken a leading position in Greek politics. His first appearance in diplomacy was as the supporter of the Bavarians and the foreign camarilla, and as the staunch opponent of a representative government, on the usual diplomatic pretext, that Greece was not fit for a constitution.*

There is a curious despatch containing a rather fulsome eulogium of the Count's administration, in the Parliamentary Papers, presented to Parliament August, 1836, p. 37. Among a number of inaccurate statements, it is said, "that not one Bavarian has landed in Greece to fill a place under government, since the king's majority." Now, if this were literally correct, there would be no great merit in it, as Count Armansperg had been absolute sovereign of Greece for more than a year previously, as president of the regency, with two ciphers as colleagues, and during that time he had brought a number of his creatures

The lavish expenditure of Count Armansperg brought Greece into financial difficulties, and the king of Bavaria recalled him, as he had done Mr. Maurer. Mr. Rudhardt was sent as his successor, but Rudhardt resigned his office of prime minister, in the month of December, 1837, and his resignation put an end to the open supremacy of the Bavarians in the Greek cabinet.

From the 20th of December, 1837, to the 15th of September, 1843, the cabinet was almost entirely composed of Greeks, though King Otho continued to employ a number of private secretaries, chiefly Bavarians, to control the acts of his ostensible ministers, and thus gave a permanent existence to the camarilla established by Count Armansperg. It is not necessary to enter into any details concerning the political conduct of the various cabinets, from the termination of the Bavarian supremacy to the establishment of constitutional liberty, in 1843. During this period, national feelings gained strength so rapidly, that the ministers of the allied powers were in turns compelled to appear as the friends of a representative system. While Bavarian domination received the unqualified support of Great Britain, France whispered a few words in favor of the constitution. When Mr. Chrestides presided over the Greek cabinet, under the auspices of France, Great Britain loudly preached revolutionary doctrines; and when Mavrocordato assumed the direction of affairs, in 1841, on anti-constitutional principles, with the joint support of France and England, Russia stepped forward as the advocate of Grecian liberty.

Let us now pause for a moment from the ungrateful task of recording the tortuous course of diplomatic intrigue, and turn to the more agreeable duty of tracing the progress of the Greek people. The year 1833 found the population of Greece, according to the unexceptionable testimony of Professor Thiersch, in a state of such destitution, that the proprietors and farmers were without cattle to till their lands. The scanty harvest of the year was, in a great part, the produce of manual labor. Every town in Greece was in ruins; Argos, which had been rebuilt under Capodistrias's government, had been

from Bavaria, and, among others, Mr. Frey, who did more injury to the finances of Greece, than any other foreigner. It is true, this was not done "since the king's majority." It would be easy to produce many other facts as contrary to the spirit of the despatch.

again destroyed; the colony of Greek refugees, established by Dr. Howe, at the isthmus of Corinth, was burnt to the ground; Athens, and the whole island of Euboea, having remained in the hands of the Turks, were almost desolate; the schools established by Capodistrias were dissolved, and the regular army had melted away. The king arrived, and the support of the three powers restored order; immediately, every man sought to rebuild his house, and every agriculturist to procure a pair of oxen; the price of labor rose to the most extravagant pitch, and the interest of money advanced to four per cent. a month. The second volume of the work of Professor Thiersch treats of the measures which the regency was bound to adopt, in order to alleviate, as much as possible, the evils under which Greece was suffering. He discusses the means of improving the condition of the agricul tural population, of restoring industry, of reviving commerce, and of ameliorating the moral and intellectual state of the people. The practical experience of the governments of Great Britain and Russia in administering the affairs of thinly peopled and partially organized territories, induced the enlight ened men in Greece to suppose that the subject must be one well understood by the ministers of these courts, and it was concluded they would communicate their advice to the regency and King Otho. The work of Professor Thiersch, however, proved useless to his countrymen; and the advice of the ministers of Great Britain and Russia, had they been really competent to give any, would have been rendered of no avail, by their joining the opposition shortly after the arrival of the regency. Indeed, the way in which the affairs of Greece were treated by king, regency, and foreign ministers, affords convincing proof, that practical knowledge of statesmanship is as rare among diplomatists in the nineteenth century, as it was in the seventeenth, when their verbal astuteness and magnificent pretensions drew from the Swedish chancellor, Oxenstiern, the celebrated reply to his son: Mi fili, parvo mundus regitur intellectu.

The advances made by the Greeks in social improvement previously to the year 1843, were almost entirely due to their own individual exertions. The little assistance they derived from their own government was unwillingly and ungraciously accorded, and any succour they received from foreigners has been vaunted rather more than it deserves. While King Otho obtained, or, to speak perhaps more correctly, seized a civil list

of two hundred thousand dollars a year, out of a revenue of two millions of dollars, and Count Armansperg allowances to the amount of thirty thousand dollars, and other Bavarians ten thousand dollars each; while orders of knighthood and crosses and stars of silver, gold, and diamonds were lavished on Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Russians; while the interest of money was at eighteen per cent., on the best security, and the consuls of the European powers were accumulating fortunes as usurers,- -no step was taken by the Greek government to alleviate the general distress or to improve the social condition of the people. In consequence of this neglect, the population of the kingdom soon suffered a considerable reduction; immense numbers of emigrants from Psara, Chios, Crete, Cyprus, Asia Minor, Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, and Constantinople, were compelled to quit Greece, in which they were unable to settle, as the government refused to sell sites for houses in the towns and villages, and exacted exorbitant rents for the national lands that lay still uncultivated.

All the oppressive regulations of the Turkish system of taxation were retained by the king's government, and their severity was rendered more stringent by farming the tithes under the revenue laws of Europe. Tribunals consisting of government officials were alone competent to decide on cases affecting the taxes, which were withdrawn from the cognizance of the regular courts of law. The farmers of the revenue received unlimited powers to regulate the proceedings of the cultivator during the harvest, so that every proprietor who attempted to introduce an improved system of agriculture was liable to extortion on the ground that he had violated the revenue laws. The consequence was, that almost every improver was ruined or compelled to abandon his attempt. No cultivator, though residing at a distance from any village, could reap a field of corn, thresh out his grain, or house his crop, without a sepa rate permission for each operation from the farmer of the reve nue; and, after all, he was compelled to transport the tenth which fell to the share of the farmer a day's journey, to such magazines as the farmer might appoint. The nine tenths belonging to the cultivator of the soil became merely an adjunct of the one tenth claimed by government, and were treated by the Greek government as a fund for insuring it against diminution. The consequence of this system on the agriculture of Greece may be seen from the windows of King Otho's palace at Athens. The land round the royal garden is cultivated

in a ruder and more unprofitable manner than in the wildest province of the Ottoman empire.

The commerce of Greece was treated with as little intelligence as the agriculture. Injudicious navigation laws exposed the Greeks of the Hellenic kingdom to be involved in commercial hostility with the Greek subjects of the Ottoman empire. Absurd sanatory regulations hampered the coasting trade of the kingdom, which is composed almost entirely of coast; the internal navigation was abandoned to Austrian and French steamers; and the sailors of Hydra and Psara were compelled to pass half their time in idleness, or seek employment in Turkey.

The moral, intellectual, and religious culture of the nation was almost as much neglected by the government as the agricultural and commercial interests of the people. It is true, that Mr. Maurer, during his administration, took some steps to organize a complete system of national education, but the subject did not meet with due attention from his successors. Unfortunately, too, Mr. Maurer himself adopted some rash measures with regard to the Greek Church, which arrested the progress of religious education.

The state of things we have described gradually produced a deep-rooted hatred of the Bavarian monarchy. Though the prime minister of Greece was no longer a Bavarian, still, the military service and the court were filled with Bavarians, who held all the best appointments. An occurrence during the visit King Louis of Bavaria paid to his son, King Otho, will afford some idea of the justice of the feelings of the Greeks. At a levee, the king of Bavaria asked a pragmatical colonel in the Greek service, "What rank did you hold in my service, before you came to Greece, Colonel?" The reply was, "Sire, I was a lieutenant." "Good, good, very good," said the Bavarian monarch, and moved on, for the promotion seemed rather too rapid. The king then addressed a fine-looking, tall captain, whose broad visage and light hair spoke his Teutonic descent: "Well, Captain, and what rank did you hold in Bavaria ?” "Your majesty, I was a corporal," was the delighted answer, proclaimed in a stentorian voice and accompanied with a selfsufficient smile. The monarch looked rather blank, but turning sharply round to a young captain with an aristocratic name and some ribbons and crosses on his breast, that seemed to speak of service in the field, he again risked the royal stereotyped inquiry, "Well, Baron, what rank did you hold at