The Express.
London, England, 1851-08-19 00:00:00

Ehe •rprTfils.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
• ' FisltJas.( " Tba esstanuny be am* event, les
..e," is p•blabeil every Twists, sal Vtiday might. to that
Cot mmt.
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dny r ; Lb/intim&

Hum WATER AT LONDON 'PRIME
76.. • 0. • w .n. 4. _171......
Tu. maw. —Manioc 7a. 60. Afttailea. lb. 2..

LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 19.

.
SiseE the famous blockade of Athens, and the
not inexplicable, though yet unexplained, choler
of the British government against King Onto and
his ministers. few have had any desire to hear
of Greece. Even its classic reminiscences have
peened out of vogue; and, save Mr. URQUHART. there
Is none amongst us so fraught with the spirit of
twat-dpropos as to make either books or speeches on
the subject.
All that our contemporaries have chronicled of
Greece itself of late has been confined to the account
of the solemn crowning of divers Greek poets by
Ring (alto. Ills Majesty feels himself and his
dynasty, no doubt, fast passing into a myth, and he
clings to the straw likely to Host him still into
future notice. Diplomatic Europe, indeed, thinks
end talks le en of OTito himself than of Orrnis sue-
COMM' ; the fixing upon whom forms one of the open
and difficult questions of the day.
The handling of this question hitherto, and, in-
deed, wo are sorry to add, the entire policy recom-
mended to the King of Gsberb and followed
by him, have tended to one of two results,
Dither to make Greece Russian, or to make
it republican, and to leave no medium at-
tainable. With respect to the essential point of
religion, a prince being chosen of a catholic family,
it was ordained that his children should he reared in
the Greek persuasion. King Ornu, however. has
had no heirs, and the succession reverts to his
brother. Ilia next brother refuses the condition of
changing his religion ; whilst his youngest brother,
Ansbnewe, refuses himself to qualify by change, yet
offers to merry and devote in promise one of his
still unborn tinegeny to the Greek succession and the
church. The Greeks complain, with justice, that
this is scurvy and derogatory. treatment of them.
The bossing them about from prince to prince, making
light of a people, and solving the difficulty by con-
demning Greece to a minority and a regency, is
monstrous. The national conclusion of every Greek
mind is, either to do without a king at all, or take
one from that royal family which alone professes the
Greek religion. To such an alternative has Bava-
rian stupidity, led by French puerility, both flattered
by Russian astuteness, brought tho kingdom and
dynasty of Greece.
'lt is scarcely necessary to observe how so uncer-
tain a elate of the future acts upon the present in
Greece. Not only are Minis years numbered, hut
the Bavarian succession itself impossible. Instead,
therefore, of providing for the future, (Minding and
strengthe :: ill g institutions, consolidating parliamen-
tar) parties and maturing p, ilitical views, the Greeks
feel themselves not on :teemed progressing in a regular
voyage, but upon one drifting to inevitable wreck.
The effort is not to save what cannot save itself, but
to make the most of the emergency, and to grasp and
ran away with all that can be secured.
This recklessness this extreme anxiety to get over
the prement and fling the future loamy chance is evi-
dent in the acts of the government of the day. If
there wits site lady in Grecce more sqweielly to
be Ps-pilled and uphold for the sake of a potent
voice in carrying and contesting questions, it
was the Senate. The favourite Will of Gunter and
of Miorreasien was ever to govern exclusively by. a
senate. But the Greek Senate, though indulging in
no (maims opposition. still acts the Mentor at time,
on the prodigality of government. The Kist: and
government know but one way of what they call
strengthening thenselsts—it is that of making
places; in other words, adding ten or twenty thou-
sand pounds a year to expenditure, without re.ference
to debt or income, or without deigning to inform par-
liament of the nature and particulars of this increase
of expense. Just as the Elector of Ilesss
treated his states, and just the way in which he pro-
duced that melancholy revolution which his swamped
the liberties of northern Germany, and fin. ever de-
atrocod the honour of its prowls>. King 0 tin
think, the Herter of It, a good MAO, and
imitatt s him. The Greek Semite imitates the
11,••x•-Passel 14%14:duns and demands informa-
tion. The KIN.; replies, not indeed as yet
by calling in the Austrians to help him to rub leis
subjects of a budget that he will nut even specify.
hut lit swamping his little senate, by elevation to
that dignity of the nun-.t good-fur-nothings. On a
late pm 1111 l tuin the greater part of the new Greek
Senators were found to be Russian serfs, men who
might he claimed and striped by their masters. 'the
result, and, of course, the aim, of such promotion,
made by Cinti,ritov. and by OTtlo, van be mewly to
diseredit the very institution of a senate, and to
throw overboard the political ideas of France,
which, at tragt, would govern by notabilities, for thaw
of Rusia, width tolerate nothing short of autocratic
government.
The mietortune of the greater and earlier portion
of King Onto*, reign has beau. that instead of en-
tertaining a Greek policy, with honest principles; Of
admieistration, he adopted a French plicy. which.
at the time. was merely one of managing eoteditu- "
timed assemblies and constituencies by corruption
and intimidation. The French prestige has now
rearmed. King Onto sees nothing in Paris on
vinyl) he can depend fur either being supported at
Athens. or pushed in after times to a loftier throne.
Itemett is the great European dictator. under whose
auspices a new holy alliance has been founded, to
the exclusion of France as well as of England. 'to
this holy alliance (Imo has acceded. Ile swears
ouw by the CZAK and no longer by the house of
thu.sess And his Majesty avows it, and dings
the promises of support made him by the CZAR
in the face of such of his subjects as still ven-
ture to resannwnd a national policy. 'fo such ends
have all the efforts of France to combat English in-
thwiwe at Athens led, viz., to a complete Russian-
itication of the court and gove au of Greece.
France, however, bus perceived her mistake. It was
but too clear that MM. PIA:ATOM and GUIZoT had
brought Greece to the same precipice as that down
which they had precipitated France. and indeed to
the brink of which they have brought all Europe,
with the alternative of saving itself by becoming
either republican or Cossack. What every country
in Europe will say to this alternative, it is not diffi-
cult to divine. All are probably like Greece. where
the court is Cossack and the people nationally and
constitutionally monarchic, but still prepared to do
without a king• if they cannot hope
.for one who has
the feelings of natiamdity or the principles of truth
and honour.

IT is not easy to say why about the middle of
August—at the close of the London season—there
should be always a marked increase of activity in the
collection of rates and taxes in and around the me-
tropolis. The fact unfurtanately is beyond a doubt.
The luckleas permanent inmates of the rent Babylon
know that as sure as the 12th of August comes
round, so sure will there be a simultaneous rush
upon them of collectors of the Queen's taxes, parish
rates, water and gas rates, &c., ac.. &e. Is it that
these gentry seek amusement by bagging rates' at
the same time that their betters are bagging grouse ?
tlr is it that they redouble their real to extract
money from the pockets of the bourgruisie as soon as
they Feel assured that the more elevated classes of
society having migrated to other regions. are safe
from their intrusion?
Such favouritism shown by the tax-gatherers
towards the lords of the soil, as is implied in
the latter conjecture, would be quite in keeping
with that evinced towards them by the im-
poaers of taxes. So recently as the earlier years of
the present century fully two-thirds of the burden of '
taxation fell upon the laud and its owners; at the
present moment scarcely one-third of it fa Is upon
them. There is no reason to complain that a great
change has taken place in the proportion of the na-
tional burdens borne by land and landed proprietors.
The capital and tesources of the industrial comma-
city as it existed in the beginning of the century '
have largely increased since that tone. New kinds
of remunerative industry and new kinds of capital
may be said to have since been called into existence.
Strom.boats, shares in gm, water. canal, and railroad