The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1826-01-31 00:00:00

AFFAIRS nr GREECE.

(Prom the Cmtnitortioteirr( or Saturday.)
In the eitpeditiosi which the Greek Committee sent to
Napoli in the month of September last, it hall joined to
the officers belonging to the artillery, the infantry and the
staff, a physician distinguished for his talents, anti capable
of organizing a sanitary system iu Greece. M. Stilly, a
member of the medical faculty in Paris, impelled by his
enthusiasm for the sacred cause of the Hellenists, by a ge-
nerous sentiment of humanity, and by a desire of con-
tributing to the progress of physiology, offered to undertake
this task, at mice difficult and honourable, and was received
by the Greek Committee in the manner that he deserved.
A letter from this physician addressed to the Greek
Committee, has only been received a few days ago,
although it is dated two months hack ; hut as its object is
principally to furnish statistical details, and to show the
importance of the assistance which the l'ommlttee has
sent to the unfortunate Geo< ks, we have no doubt that the
details which it contains will he highly interesting to the
friends of humanity, and to all those generous individuals
wbo so bitterly deplore the conduct of the European go-
; vetnments towards this brave and unfortunate nation. .

" I had scarce landed my baggage," says Dr. Hilly,
" when I was called upon to take charge or a great num-
ber of individuals, who were suffering aeverely by a dis-
ease, the effects ot which had be n deplorable. Perceiving
that I had to contend against a species of sickness which I
had studied in Italy. and on which I had published a trea-
tise just before I left Paris, I was so fortnnate as to wive
almost all those who were entrusted to my care—and the
mortality was immediatt ly stopped. As I had succt (ied
in performing several fortunate cures on distinguished hull-
viduala, 1 was inccssantly called for from all quarters; and
the constancy of my services in a small town, where no-
thing can he long concealed, was no doubt the reason that
induced Government to propme to me the organization of a
General Service of Health for Greece; and Prince Mauro-
cordato, on the part of Government. Odded to thh propo-
sition en invitation to accept the superintendence of it. In
couvequence of this I have raid down a plan which I have
the honour to request you to submit tb the Committee.
The Executive has already adopted a la-v for keying a
sum to give effect to the measures which I have proposed,
and which are to he discussed in a few days in the Cham-
ber of Representatives. Four hospitals are to be establiah-
ed—at Napoli di Romania, at Athens, at Missolonghi, and
another, as soon as circumstances shall permit, in the
island of Candia.

" Some persons may be surprised at the particulars of this
plan, which refer:to medical statistics, and may blame me
as going out of my proper department in furnishing Mi-
nisters with rules for the management of some parts of the
civil affairs. I could easily answer this sort of accusation
by stating that the influence of medicine is now much inure
extended than it formerly was; that the morephilosophical
coarse which it has pursued in our :ime has permitted the
physician to ameliorate the health of men, not only by ad-
vice to particular individuals, but by general measures of
administration, which can be referred only to the depart-
ment of medicine, when we consider their important effects
on the health of numerous bodies. I should add, besides,
that there does not yet exist any civil system in Greece ;
that no register of births, marriages, or deaths is kept, and
that if, in pu►suing my labours as a physician, I can lead
the Government to adopt any MeRSIITO: which may he use-
ful in other respects, I shad enjoy the. conviction that I
have only seconded the generous views of the Committee.
"Tice service of the four hospitals willrender it necessary
to establish a central depot of medicines in Greece. I have
consulted with Prince Manroeordato on the subject, who
agreed with me with hspect to this new regnisio•. The
expense of the establishment be five or six thousand
francs ; and if the resources of the Committee permit it to
supply us, an apothecary to whom I have written will pre-
sent a memorandum of the different articles which will be

required.
" I have another request of no it'FC importance to make to
the Committee. I have hero obliged to use almost the
whole of the medicines which I brought along with me;
and you will easily conceive that I have done so, when you
learn the manner in which I have practised medicine since
I arrived. More than ten thousand of the inhabitants of

Trip°li7zs, Argo, and all the villages burnt by Ibrahim
Pacha, were scattered about in the neighbourhood of
Napoli. These unfortunate persons, who have been
obliged to abandon in their flight all that belonged to them,
found themselves exposed, from the very nature of the
place which serves as their asylum, to the exhalations of
the stagnant waters which surround the city on its north
cast side. The famine, the coid of the nights, the
misery to which they are reduced, the horrible nature of
their situation, have given rise to maladies which every thing
concurs to render more and morn terrible. I considered
that though I had been sent to organise a military service,
I should fulfil the intentions of th,! Commiltee by contri-
buting to the relief of these victims of Turkish barbarity.
Accompanicsl by an interpreter, and several times also by
General Roche, I went to give them advice and medicines;
and you will easily imagine that it was not difficult to
exhaust the small stock which I hail brought along with
me : but it was of incalculable service. The use which
has been made of it has honoured the French name, has
shown that we could be useful, and I trust the expecta-
tions thus excited will not be deceived.

" Some people t pleasure frequently in drawing a pic-
ture of the Greeks, which is far from flattering : un-
doubtedly, many faults may be fomid with them, but it
must at the same time be observed, that the chancier of
men depends on the constitution of the country, and that
four centuries, under the influence of vicious institutions
are more than sufficient to debase the sentiments of a nation.

To censure the Greeks is, in my opinion, to censure in the
severest possible manner the odious government of the
Turks, which has degraded to such a degree a nation
who are certainly, by nature, more intelligent than 'The
people of the North. lam con ‘ineed that they will re-
sume, when circumstances shall havc changed, the direc-
tion of their ficulties that intellectual superiority over
other nations, which dicy ought to possess in consequence
of the very marked superiority arising, in my way of
thinking, from their physical organization.
" In case the Committee should, as I trust they will,
think proper to send medicines, I have subjoined a memo-
randum of those which are mere immediately required.*
" I beg a thousand pardons for all these details ; but it is
often by little things that we obtain great results, and
this (nth is more applicable to physiology than to any
other science. A grain of opium decides on life or death ; as,
in the moral world, an action of little itnportance in itself
produces great results when exerted upon intelligent
beings properly di posed.
tt If my avocations permit, I hope to be able to send you
by dui first ontettunity some ideas, which I have formed
on the spot, respecting the stab' of civilization in Greece.
The Pioductenr, as it is prinei:'cilly devoted to political
thingeconomy, and to every thing telating to industry, is the
journal to which I shall make this communication. I shall
endeavour to take such a view as shall enable me to ex-
hibit positive facts with regard to a country, the descrip-
tions of which have hitherto been too much indebted to
imagination.
• Since this, M. Rainy has written to one of his friends, a
letter dated ilie idth Dra:mber, in which he says—" The situation
of Greece bing no encouraging, and having organized the hospital
of Napoli, 1 am just Felting out to organize that of Athens."

Advices were yest..rday received from Charleston to the
29th tilt. They announce the arrival of a considerable
Spanish fleet with troops at the Havannah. As this state-
ment is communicated through several channels, there can
be no doubt of the fact. One account inentioha it as a
Spanish fleet, consisting of fifteen sail, with 4,000 troops
on board, under a convoy of three frigates: another states
the fleet to consist of three Sl,anish frigates, a brig of war,
with transports, and t,non troops, from Corunna.
Letters received on Monday evening from Demerara
announce the suppression'of the Guiana Cl/4roniele. The
reason given for this set of power is not a little curious.
'f here had been a review of the militia ; and one of the
privates, having failed to go through the exercise with the
precision required by the inspecting officcr,was reprimanded
and threatened in the coarsest language. The editor of the
Guiana Chronicle made some remarks upon the occurrence ;
and the result, according to the letters, was that the handle
of the press was taken off, and the printing-office locked up
by a party of armed constables, acting by order, or with the
cuncurrenee, of the Uercrturlit.—ti/avote Chronicle.

THE BRITISH PRESS:

PuLITICAI. Cd:VOMY.

We extract the following frot4 the number just put:-
Hated of the Monthly Review. The entire article is well
worthy of attention at the present moment; it forms an
admirable contrast to the reel,* of the same work
(l►l'C:ulloch on Political Economy). lo highly lauded in the
Adinbnrgh Review.

" There is no study that is mere perplexing, or from
which one rises with less satisfaction, than political econo-
my. No matter with whet temper Mit commences it, or
what portion of cool, patient, and persevering diligence one
pursues it, he is almost sure to be disheartened by difficul-
ties which start up at every step, hurl appear, the more in-
superable the more narrowly they are examined. Since
the publication of the " IVealth of Nations" great facilities
have been afforded, for proving and porfect;,ng the theories
of Dr. Smith. Men of undoubted talents have availed
themselves of the greatest commercial convulsions, and the
most sudden transitions in public affairs, that any people
suer experienced, to elucidate his deductions, and correct
his errors ; and yet it is itnrossible not to perceive that they
have in many Instances obscured or rendered more proble-
matical what it was their object to simplify and establish.
It is no conclusive argument, certainly, against the truth
of a science, that its numerous professors are 'at variance
regarding some of its subordinate doctrines, but it evinces
something like prinuifitcie evidence of itomattnity, when
scarcely any two of them are agreed upon any ono ele-
mental principle. This is tacitly admitted by the author
whose works we propose to examine. Ile says, • Since the
science has become an object of more general attention and
inquiry, the differences which have subsisted among the
most eminent of its proiessors have proved exceedingly un-
favourable to its progress, and have generated a disposition
to distrust its bet-established conclusions.'

" The work of Dr. Smith, although it exhibited the re-
search of an acute mind, and an extesseliii practical know-
ledge of the principles of trade anti commerce, did not, as
has been imagined, invent any new theory of wealth. He
little more than give to preconceived notions the ad-
vantage of luminous arrangement. The same principles
had been repeatedly enforced by writer! who preceded him,
and by none with greater clearness than the celebrated
Locke, in an age when manufactures were comparatively
in their infancy, and when agriculture was held to be the
chief if not primary source of wealth. Our ancestors in
their simplicity supposed that the indigenous products of
the soil,—euch at least as formed the staple aliment of the
people,—were infinitely more valuable than those of exotic
growth, not that the soil rendered them so, not that they,
were more valuable in exchange, but because they con-
sidered ilomestic cultivation to he the only sure basis of
national independence. Dr. Smith first taught that our
ancestors were in an error, and (hat it was the interest of a
country to confine itself to that trade or occupation in
which it excelled, and purchase its food at the cheapest
market. Ile nevertheless ascribed a Certain value to the
soil, and considered agriculture to be the moat useful and
advantageous pursuit. Not so his followers. They assign '
to a nation no boundaries; tiny recognise no separate in-
terests among differ.•nt states; they attach no value to the
sun, the soil, or the climate; with them the mountain-
peaks of Argyleahire are eqnally valuable as the plains of
Kent; they assume that the passions of men are univer-
sally subservient to the narrow objects of selfishness ; and
affirm that that employment which yields the highest
profits is the most conducive to national prosperity. (Prin-
ciples, &c. p. 163.) As the science therefore has become
more popular, it has become more complicated. The doc-
trines of Smith have been subjected to so much logical re-
finement that they are scarce intelligible. His system has
been so analysed, and so updermined, that were be to rise
from the grave he would not find in modern political
economy a snide trace of the theory he founded; and we
question much if, with all his erudition, he would be able
to comprehend the scholastic phraseology in which his
simple inductions are clothed, or unravel the paradoxes
which are employed to illustrate them.
" Whatever proposition it was the object of Smith to
establish or controvert, be never sought to hide the weak-
ness of his argument in ambiguous language. He may be
prolix, but we never misapprehend his meaning. His con-
clusions are drawn with a perspicuity and tact which are
rarely imitated. We may doubt his facts, we may reject I
• ►is deductions, we may even impugn his theory, without
any fear of exposing ourselves to the charge of having all
the while misunderstood his argument. But who can
affirm this of the works of lay, Sismondi, Malthus, Ri-
cardo, Mill, or Lord Lauderdale? In almost every page
of these we stumble on something that is obscure, poi-
, plwastical, or contradictory. We are bewildered in ascer-
taining whether the conclusion we have acceded to, and
the fact we are disposed to admit, be those which it is the
aim of the author's reasoning to establish. We find the
translator correcting the author ; the pupil criticising the
master; the one calling cause effect, and the other effect
cause. The explanations which are given by one writer of
the doctrines of another, are found frequently to have re-
ference to the casual implications only of the original; and,
oftentimes, when we turn up the text-book which is ap-
' pealed to, and on which no inconsiderable research has been
expended, and no little depindence placed, we are sato-
nislied to find the reasoning distorted and the facts mis-
applied."