The Sun.
London, England, 1850-06-18 00:00:00

THE SUN,

• ingly contradictory, and it appeared doubtful uhether
the account of this lonian subject were true or not. The
local officers might have been punished by due course of
law. The trial took place, the police %sere acquitted, and
it was said that no torture had tnkcn place. One would
have thought this would have been a staggerer for the Se-
cretary ~f State far Foreign Affairs, but this
did not satisfy him. The Noble Lord had
declared the trial unsatisfactory, and demands
reparation, whereupon M. Coletti transmits a note,
that the lawyers of Greece determine that there is
no reason for further inquiries, and the
subject dropped. This was not calculated to raise the
representative of the Foreign-office in the eyes of the
Greek Government. He would now proceed to the
claims which had been urged on the Greek Govern-
ment, and there was only one of these cases
in which he thought that reparation ought not
only to have been demanded, but to have been promptly
enforced—he meant the insult to the boat's crow of any
of her Majesty's ships at Patras—but even this outrage
was not without its excuse.—(Hear, hear.) At the
commencement of the year 1848 the provinces of
Greece had been in a state of disturbance of a revolu-
tionary character, and a very short time before, her
Majesty's steamer, the Spitfire, in pursuance of that kind
and generous policy which her Majesty's Ministers have
always pursued towards the Mediterranean states, called
in at Patras and received on board a notorious rebel
against the Government of Greece. Whilst the country
was in this state of disorder her Majesty's ship Fantome
appeared off the coast of Patras ; and on the evening of
a dark day, in violation of a well-known order, a boat
of ours landed in a remote place in the very neighbour-
hood of the house from which the former rebel made
his escape to our steamer. The attention of the guard
was called to the fact. The boat landed two unknown
persona. On being invited to stop one of them imme-
diately fled, and, aided by the darkness of the night,
escaped. The other was taken. The guard then pro•
needed to the boat, and its crew were made prisoners by
three Greek soldiers. The guard found a midshipman
on board the boat, not wearing his uniform, or any
distinction by which he could be known as a Bri-
tish officer. The boat's crew and the midshipman
were immediately taken before the nomarch. As the
one party could speak no Greek, and the
other could speak nothing but Greek, there was some
difficulty i❑ coming to an understanding of each
other ; but as soon as the commandant of the place
ascertained that they belonged to a British ship of
war, he discharged them from custody, and saw them
on board the Fantome himself. Captain Le Hardy
on the next morning demanded from the Greek
nomarch, as was his duty, a reparation or apology for
the insult offered to his boat's crew, and compensation
for the loss of his boat's gear, as a boathook (belonging,
however, to the Spitfire) had dropped overboard in the
struggle. Captain Le Hardy then appeared before the
nomarch and proposed that all parties should be called
in, and the whole case should be openly examined into,
but the nomarch refused to enter upon it, on the ground
that he had already put the case into the hands of the
Procureur du Roi. The Fantome was obliged to sail
the next evening for Malta; and, after she was known
to have departed, the nomarch demanded from our con-
sul leave to examine the boat's crew, contending that it
was not a boat of the Fantomo but of the Spitfire, which
had landed on the previous evening. But the following
day the consul, not satisfied, says the nomarch must
have known he ought to have sent his explanation
sooner—must have known the Fantome was on the point
of sailieg, and he transmits the whole correspondence to
the Minister at Athens. Together with correspondence
is a letter from Lieutenant Macdonald, of the Spitfire,
and Lieutenant Macdonald, of the Spitfire, appears to
correspond very well with the name which his vessel
bears.—(A laugh.) Here is the moderate, temperate
letter of Lieutenant Macdonald, which is duly and offi-
cially transmitted with a request for reparation, and, as
a conciliatory mode of obtaining it, is sent to the Minister
at Athens:—

" The governor of this town has taken upon himself
not only to display a hostile feeling towards the British
Government, but also to permit a most unjustifiable out-
rage to be committed on an officer and boat's crew of her
Majesty's sloop Fantome. I consider it my duty, as the
senior officer present at Patras, to prevent all commu•
nication between her Majesty's ship Spitfire, under my
command, and the town of Patras, except for the pur-
pose of receiving the necessary supplies for the ship,
through the medium of a boat belonging to the shore. I
have further to request that you will be good enough
distinctly to state to the governor, that I have repre-
sented to my own Government this state of aflairs, the
more especially when I bear in mind the abominable
falsehoods circulated by his authority, and through a
letter to yourself, accusing the officers and men of land-
ing strangers under cover of the night. It is quite im-
possible under these circumstances that I can hold any
communication for the future with an authority that
sets all international law at defiance. I have strictly
prohibited any officer or man to land from this ship, and
my reasons fur doing so must appear evident, for in the
event of a repetition of the circumstances that occurred
to the boat of the Fantome the evening before last, a
collision must inevitably ensue, which it is my wish to
avoid as fir as lies in my power. My positive orders
having been issued that in all future communications
between this ship's boats and the shore, the Spitfire's
boats are to be fully armed and equipped, and fully pre-
pared to resent any insult that may be offered to them."
Was there ever such a mountain made out of a molehill?
—(Hear.) This was transmitted as a serious matter
of international quarrel by her Majesty's representa-
tive to the Minister at Athens.—(tlear, hear.) Well,
what gays he? Ile says, I am exceedingly sorry to
find that there is any misunderstanding, and that it is
supposed there is an unfriendly feeling ou the part of the
authorities towards her Majesty's subjects; I assure you
there is nothing of the kind. I send you at once the
papers I have as yet got; you shall have all that I re-
ceive; I only send you these now that you may see there
is a different account from yours."—(Hear, hear.) There
the account closes; and mark, where there has been
really an insult offered—where the solemn declaration
and word of honour of two British officers commanding
ships of her Majesty were not accepted and admitted as
a declaration of a matter of fact—where that affront
(for such I conceive it to be) has been offered to the
honour of her Majesty's service, you find upon that
question, though the consul is exceedingly active and
the Minister is exceedingly active, there is no demand
fur reparation or apology on the part of the Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, and the whole matter has
been allowed to sleep from 1848 to 1850.—(Hear,
hear.) The next case was one in which some
lonian boats' crews were plundered in the port of Sal-
eine. It appears that a band of armed men took pos-
session of the Greek Custom-house, bound the Custom-
house officer, and, availing themselves of the Custom-
house itself, decoyed lonian boats into the harbour, and
plundered them to the amount of 1,200 dollars. Sir E.
Lyons of course reported the facts; he wrote to M.
Coletti, and this is the letter which he hands in to M.
Coletti

" The enclosures relate to the plunder of six lonian
boats at Saleine, in the river Acheloos; with reference
to that subject, I have to instruct you to address a note
to M. Coletti, stating that her Majesty's Government
expect and demand that the Greek Government will
make full compensation to the lonians fur the losses and
sofnring,s inflicted open them by tho Greek robbers end
pirates Ts'ao veer() pilo7-ed 1370 n that occasion to take
p05...-F,siori of the Co tom-`ogee a,t Salcina; and you
will vsy that her Majesty's Lord High Commissioner of
the lowan Islands will ho instructed to ascertain the
amount to bo claimed on behalf of the masters and crews
of the six lonian boats, and to send you an account
thereof."

It was exceedingly doubtful whether, on the part of the
British Government or the lonian Government, there
was just ground for demanding indemnity from the Go-
vernment of Greece.—(Hear, hear.) The Government
was bound to afferd protection to foreigners and to its
own subj cts alike; but British subjects before now had
been pillaged in the Roman States and the Neapolitan
States, and he never heard cf any demand against the
Government of either of those states because robbers
came down and committed plunder.—(Clear, hear.) He
was very much inclined to agree with the very tempe-
rate answer of M. Coletti. He says—
" The duty of the King's Government was to put down
crime, and it has not neglected to do so. I think it su-
perfluous, M. le Chevalier, to bring before your notice
again the difficulties which are always opposed to effec•
tually maintaining authority in the province of Acar-
nania; but no one is ignorant of the attempts which
have been made. Soldiers have fallen in encounters
with the banditti; several of the latter have recently
been killed. The pursuit is still continued, and, with
the assistance of the Lord High Commissioner, I
hope that the individual marked out as the principal
author of the outrage committed at Salcina, the lonian
Tryphon, who has escaped from the prisons of Santa
Maarn, will at last fall into the hands of justice. No-
thing will lie neglected in order to obtain this result,
which I have much pleasure in hoping will be consi-
dered by the Government of her Britannic Majesty as
the fu!filinent of the only obligation which the Govern-
ment of his Hellenic Majesty can be held responsible fur
in this affair."
What is the answer of Lord Palmerston?
" I have received your dispatch of the 9th ult., enclos-
ing a copy of M. Coletti's letter to you of the 30th of
March, declining to compensate the master of the six
lonian boats which were plundered at the Custom-house
at Salcina in October last; and I have to instruct you to
state to M. Coletti that there is taothing in his letter
' which alters the view which her Majesty's Government
have taken of this case; and you will say, that as the
Greek Government have been either unwilling or unable
to put down the gangs of robbers which have for some
time been allowed to infest Acarnania with impunity,
and even to choose a Greek Custom-house as the spot
for plundering and otherwise ill-using lonian subjects,
her Majesty's Government must require the Government
of Greece to make good the loss incurred by those lonian
subjects, and they hope and trust that M. Coletti will
see the justice of acceding to this demand without any
further delay."
If a similar case had occurred in England, and if such
a demand had been couched in such terms, he wished to
know whether the ambassador who had dared to present
it would not have received his passports in less than 48
hours?—(Cheers.) He had been told that within the
last few weeks au application had been made by the
Austrian Government in a case that occurred on the
coast of Ireland. A request was made for compensa-
tion, and was transmitted to her Majesty's Government.
He should like to know whether the demand was made
as a rig,ht.—(Hear, hear.) Her Majesty's Government,
finding it a very convenient time for acceding to that
request—(Hear, hear)—finding it might be brought for-
ward as a precedent—(Hear, hear)—thought that 5001.
would be well expended in compensating the Austrian
crew for their losses and sufferings; but he should like
to know whether it was granted as of right or of favour.
Here was another case, some lonians at Patras, keepers
of a coffee-house, on a festival, put up a great variety of
flags—British, lonian, Greek, and others—as ornaments
over their shop. Where was same little disturbance in