The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-02 00:00:00

THE MASSACRE IN GREECE.

If, instead of acknowledging their own shortcomings,
says the Saturday Review, the Greeks should taunt
Englishmen with the condition of Ireland, it must be
admitted with shame that it is possible to utter such re-
proaches and that it is impossible to refute them. The
Irish, even if their country offered attractions to travel-
lers, have not the habit of waylaying foreign visitors, or
of killing them when they fail to pay ransom ; but the
impunity which has long been enjoyed by assassins is pro-
ducing its natural effect in extending the range of their
activity. The seditious newspapers, before the late Act
was passed, constantly applauded the practice which they
facetiously described as the execution of landlords. It
has lately been found that the simple remedy of murder is
equally applicable to the redress of grievances uncon-
nected with the land. A railway station-master has been
killed for dismissing a porter, and a tradesman for raising
the price of butter and eggs ; private persons are warned
on pain of death not to discharge their domestic servants,
and a justice of the peace has been shot because in the
ordinary course of his duty he committed a sheepstealer to
prison. In all cases, whatever may be the cause of
offence, and whether the victim is a gentleman, a shop-
keeper, or a farm-labourer, the neighbours and the eye-
witnesses of murder invariably take the part of the
criminal. The moral judgment of the community is per-
haps repressed by fear, rather than distorted by perverse
sympathies. A majority of the population probably re-
sents and despises the cant which is invariably uttered
when measures of redress are proposed or demanded in
Parliament. When terror is spread through large dis-
tricts a virtuous Minister gravely quotes the stale propo-
sition that the Irish were three hundred years ago pre-
eminently fond of justice. In Ireland or in Greece the
first duty of a Government is to take care that robbers
and murderers are subjected to exemplary punishment. The
Greek Government at least will probably not profess
that the execution of the Marathon criminals must be
preceded or accompanied by the redress of constitutional
grievances.

The Spectator observes that the case airainst the Greek
Government is a very serious one indeed, though the
public has hit upon the wrong gravamen. That Govern-
ment is wrong, to begin with, in its original position. It
is one of the obligations which civilisation, in return for
the protection it secures, imposes on every Government,
that it should, to the best of its ability, maintain such
external order that strangers should be able to move on
their affairs in some decent security ; that it should, at all
events, do its best to preserve them from violent outrage
or assassination. So strong is this rule, that in cases
where the Government is for any reason unable to per-
form this function, as in Turkey, Egypt, and China,
Western Europe compels the defaulting States to agree
to " capitulations," under which its own envoys exercise
the powers needful for the security of foreigners ; and
that even in civilised States, the strongest representations
are occasionally and lawfully made to secure justice
against private injury to the subjects of the remonstrating
State. The Greek Government has not only not maintained
this security, but has not honestly tried to maintain it.
To withdraw from Greece absolutely as a State with
which civilised Powers could hold no intercourse, as we
withdrew from Naples, would be just enough, but as it
would hand over the Court to Russian agents, would be
inexpedient. The true course would be, we believe, if
the protecting Powers could act together, as they seemwilling to do, to require the dismissal of the War Mini-
ster—said to be already conceded—a grant by formal act,
not of money, but of monuments in Athens to the mur-
dered diplomatists, as a warning to all time that they at
least are sacred, and the extinction of brigandage—under
penalty of a demand for the international tribunal im-
posed on all other semi-civilised States with which
civilised men hold intercourse. The Greek Government
can put brigandage down if it pleases, and if it pleads
inability, it must ask aid from the Powers, or accept the
consequences of its impotence. The total and final extinc-
tion of brigandage in Greece will be the best and the
most permanent revenge for our murdered countrymen.
The Economist asks if we were right in considering the
amnesty and reward of the robbers a mere feather in the
scale against our countrymen's lives, how should Greece
be wrong in applying the same rule to similar cases for
the future? How could we for very shame say—" When
the lives of Englishmen are at stake, all the moral consi-
derations which restrain the Government from amnestying
robbers and would-be murderers should be waived at once,
but you shall not apply the same rule to the lives of
Greeks without incurring our constant reproaches and
remonstrances?" We confess that though Lord Claren-
don's action in the matter may be excused by the strong
personal feelings which must necessarily have been excited
under an emergency so painful, we cannot con-
ceive conduct less open to calm justification on
any even plausible moral grounds. As to the
liabiality of the Greek Government we must reserve
our opinion till all the facts are before us.
All we wish to point out now is, that whether Greece be
liable or not to us and to Italy for what has occurred,
public opinion in this country is hardly in a calm or
healthy state when, instead of excusing Lord Clarendon
for committing a very great error in a very great emer-
gency, it openly endorses all he did, without taking the
slightest account of the immorality of the proceeding, and
then cries out for a species of vengeance, which, however
striking and theatrical, would probably greatly enhance
the evil. When we are fully assured as to the liability of
the Greek Government for the cruel murder of our Secre-
tary of Legation and his friends, let us press our claims
with the proper firmness ; but let it not be said of the
English Government that its action abroad is always
unscrupulous and selfish where English interests are con-
cerned, and that we should never hesitate to degrade still
further the whole morale of a by no means scrupulous
people, for the sake of two or three valuable English
lives and the happiness of the homes with which they are
identified.

The John Bull remarks that the French papers are not
altogether without grounds for the remark that this
terrible crime in Greece is not, all things considered, out
of all proportion to the daily offences against property and
life which take place with perfect impunity in Ireland.
Were Ireland, like Greece, conterminous with a State
where law is so utterly disregarded as Turkey, we fear
that we should have no cause to lecture Greece upon the
perpetration of such crimes as that which we record with
such sorrow in our impression of this week. How far the
Government of that country is to blame for having led to
the murder of these gentlemen by the means used to ob-
tain their release, or how far the victims themselves were
lulled into a fatal security by information obtained at
Athens, are questions into which, in the absence of infor-
mation, we cannot enter. We trust, for the credit of
humanity, that the suggestion that the capture, and the
obstinacy of the brigands in insisting upon impossible
terms of amnesty for themselves and for all the members
of the bands of brigands in prison, was a party move on
the side of the Opposition in the Greek Chamber to em-
barrass the Government, is without foundation. Such an
exhibition of the unscrupulousness of party is incredible
even in the not very scrupulous politicians who make
Continental government a bye word and a reproach in Ulf
kingdom of Greece.