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 Tribunals consisting of government officials were alone competent to decide on cases affecting the taxes, which were withdrawn from the cognizance of the regular courts of law.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

Munich ?" "Sire, I was then at the military academy," was the modest reply. "Thunder and storms," whispered his majesty to his own aide-de-camp, "it is not safe asking questions here in Greece; but if the Greeks are promoted as rapidly as the Bavarians, no doubt Sir Edmund Lyons is quite right, and every body must be vastly pleased with Count Armansperg's administration, except, perhaps, the parties who may think of paying the loan he is spending."

A short time after the Bavarians were driven from their supremacy in Greece, the Russian party acquired a predominant influence. The discovery of a secret society which embraced many Russian partisans both in Greece and Turkey, was adroitly used by the British minister to exclude them from power, by creating a serious alarm in the mind of King Otho concerning their ulterior projects. This secret association was called the "Philorthodox Society," and it acquired a considerable degree of celebrity from the British cabinet affecting to believe that both the Greek monarchy and the Turkish empire were exposed to imminent danger by its intrigues.

The British minister would in all probability have recovered his influence at the Greek court, after this discovery, had the mind of King Otho not been deeply prejudiced against British policy by a series of the most violent personal attacks that were ever made on the character of a reigning prince. Almost immediately after the recall of Count Armansperg, a number of letters began to appear in the London Morning Chronicle, then generally regarded as the organ through which the foreign office communicated its opinions and prejudices to the public. Though these letters were utterly destitute of the polished and pointed style of the famous invectives of Junius, they displayed in their incorrect and ill-constructed sentences all the fierce and malignant passions of the secret libeller, and the same preference of sarcasm to truth. King Otho was the great object of hostility, and the attacks were rather directed against his person with the intention of wounding his feelings, than against the nature of his despotic power for the purpose of improving the constitution of Greece. The letters appeared as communications from a correspondent at Athens, but it was soon evident in Greece that they originated in diplomatic circles, where many things were known of which the people of Athens had not the smallest idea. As the correspondence was extensively disseminated by the British legation and British consuls in Greece, it soon began to excite great attention.

From one step to another, the correspondence reached its climax, by declaring that King Otho was "an idiot," and that a certificate had been signed by a number of Bavarians about the court, declaring his incapacity, and the names of several persons holding high offices in the king's palace were published as having signed the certificate. The news produced a ferment at Athens, and caused the dismissal of two of the Bavarians accused by the anonymous writer, from their offices at court. Conjectures were risked concerning the real source of the correspondence, but the mystery of the writer has never been revealed. The effects of the attacks on King Otho have, however, been visible ever since, in the uneasy position occupied by the British minister at the Greek court. King Otho, not without justice, considers himself grossly insulted, both by the publication of the correspondence in a ministerial paper, and by the publicity given to the correspondence by the agents of the British government in Greece; and he holds Sir Edmund Lyons and Lord Palmerston responsible, as many of the facts could never have become public without the sanction of one of these ministers.

The effect in Greece was also injurious to the English party. Some of the Greeks, disgusted with the conduct of the court, inferred that the British cabinet had determined to dethrone King Otho, and imprudently embarked in anti-dynastic intrigues. The personal hostility between King Otho and Sir Edmund Lyons became a marked feature in Greek politics. A section of the constitutional party began to plot the dethronement of King Otho, and the royalists demanded the recall of Sir Edmund Lyons. Both parties failed, but the astuteness displayed by the king of Greece in the long diplo matic struggle he has carried on with a minister of the acknowledged talents and great popularity of Sir Edmund Lyons, has afforded the world ample proof of his capacity to reign in the way most unfavorable to British influence.

This unfortunate discord proved very injurious to the progress of Greece. When the cry of the Greek people for constitutional government, as the only means of alleviating the burdens under which they suffered, became so loud as to alarm the court, King Otho, distrusting the projects of Great Britain and Russia, both of whom he seems to have suspected of designs to dethrone him, threw himself into the arms of France, and trusted blindly to its support. A revolution was evidently impending. Great Britain and Russia united in pressing for

explanations concerning the financial position of the Greek government, and the king, in his embarrassment, adopted the most injudicious measures of economy, making extensive retrenchments among the Greeks in order to maintain all the overpaid Bavarian officers, officials, and courtiers about the palace. The consequence was a revolution headed by the Greek military, on the 15th of September, 1843. King Otho was compelled to proclaim the constitution which had been in abeyance since the dispersion of the deputies at Pronia, and convoke a national assembly.

It is generally supposed that both the English and Russian ministers at Athens regarded the dethronement or abdication of King Otho as a certain consequence of the revolution, unless he should throw himself into their arms for protection. That his dethronement was actively sought and openly advocated by many of their partisans, is generally asserted, and the accusation acquires some color from the facts noticed in a pamphlet lately published at Edinburgh by Mr. Edward Masson, the British Philhellenist best acquainted with the political affairs of Greece, and who was present at Athens during the revolution. Mr. Masson says, "It cannot be denied, that an Athens correspondent of the Morning Post, who usually knows very accurately how the wind blows at the British legation, wrote to that journal ten days before the revolution, and stated that the object of the impending movement was positively the forcible expulsion of Otho, and the overthrow of the Bavarian dynasty; and that a constitution would not be accepted at Otho's hands, should he offer it a hundred times. This remarkable letter was printed, with observations of the editor, before the news of the revolution could reach England. Litera scripta manet.'

The opinion that the British and Russian legations directed

*Mr. Edward Masson resided in Greece from 1824 to 1845. He held the highest legal offices in the country, and his eloquence at the bar was the admiration of the Greeks. The pamphlet from which we quote, consists of two letters published in an Edinburgh newspaper, "The Witness;" the one addressed to Mr. Baillie Cochrane, who is also the author of a pamphlet "On the state of Greece," and the second addressed to the Earl of Dundonald, better known as Lord Cochrane. Mr. Masson is also the author of a valuable little work entitled, "An Apology for the Greek Church; or Hints on the means of promoting the religious improvement of the Greek nation: by Edward Masson, one of the Judges in the supreme court of Areopagus. Edited by J. S. Howson, M. A., of Trinity College, Cambridge. London. 1844." The Morning Post succeeded the Morning Chronicle, as the channel through which the Greek court was attacked at London.