The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF

THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—When the Greek Constitution at last saw
the light, we took the liberty of commenting on the
folly which led the Assembly of Greece at so critical
a time to spend a year in discussing the abstruse
principles of representative government, instead of
addressing itself at once to the task that imperatively
required its attention—the reform of the local insti-
tutions and the regulation of the finances of a country
yet palpitating and heaving under the throes of an
unfinished revolution. Many, perhaps, thought
that we bore too hardly upon a young people
struggling into existence after centuries of slavery,
succeeded by many years of gross bureaucratical
corruption and oppression. Everything that has
happened since, however, has tended to confirm the
view we then took. No questions have arisen, or
are likely to arise, calculated to test the wisdom of
those minute provisions which the Constitution em-
braces, but we learn from the letters of our able and
experienced correspondent in Athens that there is no
want of subjects on which the power of the wisest
statesmen and the most patriotic Legislature might

very profitably be employed. He does not believe
the Greeks to be, as is generally thought, a people
difficult to govern. On the contrary, he seems dis-
posed to think that their capacities in this respect
have never been tested, since, from the days of the
Roman Empire up to the present time, Greece has
never enjoyed a tolerable Government. So far
from the revolution having done anything towards
remedying the real evils of Greece, it has in
some respects considerably aggravated them. The
crying evils of Greece are corruption in all the
branches of the Government, brigandage, and that

which is closely connected with brigandage, the op•
. .

pression practised on the inhabitants of the rural
communes. From these causes combined follows the
desolation of the country. The state of things may be'
compared to that which contributed so materially to
the subversion of the Roman Empire, where the rural
districts were depopulated because, from the want of
police and the oppressive nature of the taxes, it was
impossible to cultivate them. Thus the Roman Em-
pire died out for want of Romans, just as Greece is
in danger of perishing for want of Greeks, who seem
to possess the faculty of success everywhere but in
their own country, simply, we suppose, because every
other country is better governed than their own.
Let us see how the Government of King George
contrasts in these respects with the Government of
• King Otho. On the question of Ministerial corrup-
tion we will not enter, but content ourselves with
remarking that we have observed no inclination on
the part of the Ministries who have suceeeded each
other in Athens to reduce the overgrown establish-
ments upon which the public revenue is lavished.
In a country requiring perhaps more than any other
in the world an enlightened and liberal expenditure
on public works, not only the central but the local
funds are absorbed in useless and superfluous offices.
The Government is as completely centralised as
that of France itself, and the patronage of every-
thing is entirely in the hands of the Minister of the
Interior. In the latter years of Otho, brigandage,
at any rate, had ceased to play the prominent
part which it used to occupy in the rural history of
Greece. The roads were comparatively safe, and
such traffic as did take place in a thinly-peopled
agricultural kingdom was attended with no serious
risk. This state of things continued for some
time after the revolution. It has now, how-
ever, totally changed. We learn that Attica is in-
fested by a celebrated robber and murderer named
Kitzos, and the Greek papers announce the disper-
sion of seven bands of brigands in the Peloponnesus.
Gratifying intelligence certainly, but leading to me=
lancholy reflections on a state of things under which
seven bands of brigands could find existence in a
country so small and so poor as the Morea. But
worse even than the miseries inflicted on the people
by their own hands seems to be the obstruction to
internal improvement offered by the Government.
Greece, as we have often remarked, is really very
much in the condition of a newly-settled country.
Its old civilisation has long died out, and its newly-
constituted society has not seriously set itself to
contend with the bad legacy which 1,30,0 years of
barbarism have bequeathed to it. The marshes are
undrained, and have become a fruitful source of
deadly fevers; the quarries and mines are unworked,
and, worse than all, there are no roads to connect
the inland districts with the sea. " When we want a
bridge," said an American, "we take a church to build
it with," but the rural districts of Greece are allowed
no such option. As an instance of misgovernment our
correspondent cites the case of a rural commune in
the fertile and beautiful island of Eubcea. The in-
habitants of the communes are allowed by the Con-
stitution the privilege of regulating their own budget
—that is of settling the manner in which their money
shall be spent. But, unfortunately, the Nomarch
enjoys a veto upon the provisions of this budget.
Stimulated by the excellent speeches which were
made in the National Assembly in the fervour of
revolution, and really believing that they were
likely to derive some benefit from the change if
they only showed a disposition to help themselves,
these worthy Eubceans set to work to reduce the
amount of their expenditure. We are assured
that, without diminishing in any way the efficiency
of their establishments, and without subtracting a
penny from any object of utility, they contrived to
reduce their Budget one-third. This, however, did
not suit the views of the Minister of the Interior.
It was an evil precedent. The existence of a num-
ber of offices, the patronage of which is vested in
his hands, was threatened, and the prospects of local
improvement were to him as nothing in comparison.
He refused his consent to the Budget, and so the
roads are to remain unmade, and the patronage of
the Minister of the Interior to remain intact. It is
to things like this that the Government of
.Greece
should look, if it wishes really to reform the mstitu-
tions of the country. Compared with such a griev-
ance as this, what are constitutional questions,
quorums, and majorities, and dynasties, and all the
paraphernalia of free representative government ?
The first end and object of government is to obtain
for its subjects protection for life and property.
When this has been thoroughly done, when these
things cease to be a matter of speculation and
anxiety, when men feel a thorough confidence that
they will be permitted to reap what they have sown,
and that they may sleep secure from midnight vio-
lence, they will naturally turn their attention t 3
more
abstruse political questions, and demand a
voice in the expenditure of their own revenue, and
in the nomination of their own ministers. But that
which is necessary must come first, and Greece will
not have made a single step towards real improve-
ment until she has abolished the bureaucratic influ-
ences which now paralyze her rural industry, and
given the people the management of at least the
direct taxation which they raise among themselves
for local purposes. We cannot wonder that in a
nation oppressed by such miseries there should arise
a strong feeling in favour of a regal, as opposed to
a Parliamentary, regime. They see in their Assem-
bly the stronghold of the bureaucracy that oppresses
them, and in the divided counsels and place hunt-
ing tendencies of their public men, together with the
misgovernment which discourages cultivation and all
honest labour, the cause of the brigandage which
makes their lives full of peril and anxiety. They
look to a king as the only refuge from the plunder
of their fellow-citizens, and as the only power suffi-
ciently strong to coerce the bureaucracy under
which they groan. Such is the state •at which the
third year of revolution finds the Hellenic kingdom.
HERALD.—An influential Viennese newspaper,
bitterly hostile•to the present Austrian Administra-
tion, whose policy, especially in foreign affairs, it is
never weary of assailing, has lately published an
analysis of a remarkable correspondence, consisting
of twoklespatches of Herr Von Bismarck, and two
replies of Count Mensdorff. The analysis is, pro-
fessedly, an imperfect one. The correspondent who
supplied it admits that he writes merely from his
recollection—the documents were not before him
when he summarised their contents. That his ana-
lysis, however, is substantially correct we have the
testimony of the Austrian official journal, which
declares that the Presse could only have obtained its
information in a very improper manner. That
question, of course, is one with which we have no-
thing to do. We are concerned only to know what
are the facts, and must leave our Viennese contem-
poraries to settle amongst themselves whether those
facts have become publzcz juris properly or impro-
perly. It appears, then, that on the 13th of De-
cember, more than a month ago, a week after the
vote of the Diet declaring the execution at an end,
' the same day that he despatched the scolding and
warning to Bavaria—upon which we have already
commented—Herr Von Bismarck addressed two
despatches to the Prussian Charge d'Affaires at
Vienna. In the first he takes credit for the mode-
ration he had displayed towards the minor states,
and justifies his opposition to their pretensions on
the ground that they are governed by their Cham-
bers, and that in resisting them Prussia is resisting
the revolutionary principle. We can well un-
derstand that Herr Von Bismarck may have
sought to win Austria to his views by representing
the Saxon and small state opposition as based
mainly upon Democratic support ; but the argu-
ment of the dispatch is, no doubt, carica-
tured by the Austrian journalist, whose object
was to hold Prussia up to the hatred and Austria
to the admiration of Germany. In the second des-
patch of the same date the Prussian Minister, after
intimating that he had desired his colleagues, the
Ministers of War and Commerce, to draw up the
conditions upon which Prussia can recognise the in-
dependence of the Duchies without danger to her own
safety and the interests of Germany, suggests that
Austria and Prussia should come to a closer under-
standing upon the subject, and pointo -out that
Austria, from her geographical position, has no in-