For nearly five years—that is, from the beginning of 1833 to the end of 1837—the Bavarians continued to waste the loan granted by the three powers, partly in large salaries to themselves, and partly in creating places and jobs for the Greeks, to induce the most influential and clamorous to consent to their mode of dissipating the public money. Notwithstanding this, there can be no doubt that Greece received some permanent benefit from the regency. The Greeks were not in a condition to establish an equitable system of laws. M. Maurer endowed the country with this invaluable boon. To him Greece owes its excellent judicial organisation, and its code of civil procedure. Whatever were the defects of M. Maurer as a statesman, he was an able legislator, practically conversant with every detail of legal administration. The judicial system he planted in Greece was so complete in all its parts, that it has become an element in the political civilisation of the kingdom; and it affords the strongest grounds of hope to those who look forward to the Greek nation as the instrument for extending political civilisation in the East. Count Armansperg governed Greece much longer than M. Maurer, but his improvements were not so beneficial. He made court balls and political bribery national institutions.
During the whole of the Bavarian domination, a well-filled treasury, a number of foreign officers and native councillors of state, political sycophants, dressed in handsome uniforms and speaking good French, a hired press, and a liberal distribution of King Otho’s Order of the Redeemer of Greece, with its ribbon and star, to foreign diplomatists and English peers, concealed from Western Europe the discontent, civil wars, and brigandage that fermented in the little kingdom. The bands of robbers that infested Greece during this period became so numerous as to give their system of plunder the character of a civil war. In the year 1835, during the administration of Count Armansperg, a body of about 500 brigands remained for more than a month levying contributions under the walls of Lepanto, in which it kept the garrison blockaded until relieved by a general from Athens with a strong detachment of Bavarian and Greek regular troops. These armed bands repeatedly resisted the central government, which drew all the money of the country to the capital without making any improvements in the provinces. Several foreign officers were charged with the task of re-establishing order. Generals Schmaltz, Gordon, and Church, each made a campaign against the brigands, who rendered Messenia, Etolia, Acarnania, Doris, and Phthiotis in turns the scene of their skirmishes with King Otho’s troops. Besides this extensive system of brigandage, a regular civil war was caused in Maina by the same central rapacity and want of judgment on the part of the Regency. In Maina, the Bavarian troops were defeated, and a considerable number were compelled to lay down their arms.
During the whole of the Bavarian domination, the Greeks enjoyed the liberty of the press. M. Maurer placed the newspapers under some reasonable restraints, and Count Armansperg made one or two feeble demonstrations against them, for he was timid in everything but emptying the Greek treasury. His attacks were easily repulsed, and the Greeks have the honour of retaining the liberty of the press by their own exertions, though they have hitherto not rendered the privilege of much use to the nation. At length, in the month of December 1837, the Chevalier Rudhart, the last Bavarian prime-minister, resigned his office, and from that time King Otho has governed his kingdom with Greek or Albanian prime-ministers. This office has been more than once held by men who could hardly read or write; but the individuals have invariably been persons of some mark in the factions that divide the place-hunters of Athens. The ignorance and want of education of his ministers, which is often made a reproach to King Otho, ought to be considered as a national disgrace, for the court would never have selected men so destitute of administrative knowledge, had they not possessed considerable influence and a numerous following.
Ever since the commencement of the year 1838, the Greeks have possessed a predominant influence in King Otho’s cabinet. They are entirely responsible for the faults of his government from that time; for if the Greek ministers had used their power with a very little honesty, and one single grain of patriotism, they might have retained the direction of the internal administration in their own hands, and effected every improvement the nation could desire. Indeed, if they had ever shown a wish to improve the material condition of the population, it is probable King Otho would have given them his support in their endeavours. But when the King saw them intent only on profiting by office to enrich themselves and create places for their partisans, in order to perpetuate their tenure of office, he very naturally looked about for means to form a royal party, and thus render the court independent of the ministers. We shall soon explain to our readers how effectually his Hellenic Majesty accomplished this object. The Greek ministers never made any serious effort to diminish the weight of taxation, either by economy or by improving the barbarous manner in which the agricultural taxes are collected; they thought only of appropriating the national lands, and creating new places to reward their supporters. Instead of establishing systematic regulations for securing a respect to seniority and merit in civil, judicial, and military appointments, they destroyed the system the Bavarians had established, and disposed of the highest offices in the most arbitrary and unprincipled manner. Judges have been appointed in violation of the law, and men have been made generals who had never served in a military capacity. Worthless politicians and intriguing secretaries were decorated with military titles in order to enrich them with high pay. These men may be seen at the balls in King Otho’s palace, flaunting in vulgar embroidery, and imitating with Greek pertness the sumptuous Albanian dress and Mussulman gravity of the chiefs who filled the halls of Ali Pasha of Joannina. The Greeks alone have enjoyed the profits of the corruption which has reigned in the administration since the year 1838; they are consequently not entitled to throw the blame on foreigners.
In consequence of the misconduct of the Greek ministers and the servility of a council of state filled with official sycophants, the Greek government became such a scene of corruption that the patience of all ranks was exhausted, and an attempt was made to reform the vicious system by a revolution in the year 1843. A representative chamber and an imitation of Louis Philippe’s senate of officials, called in France a House of Peers, were constituted. The deputies were chosen by universal suffrage, but the election of the municipal authorities was left subject to the oligarchical restrictions imposed by the Regency. Ten years have now elapsed since the constitutional system was established, so that for ten years the Greeks have made their own laws and voted their own budgets. At the same time, the enjoyment of the fullest liberty of the press, and the existence of sixteen newspapers at Athens, have enabled every party and class to criticise the acts of the government with unrestrained license. If corruption and venality have been the leading features of political society in Greece during this period, it is evident that the nation has been a party to the abuses, from its refusal to punish the offenders. The mass of those whose superior knowledge and rank have obtained for them the direction of public opinion in political matters, have sacrificed the interests of the nation to advance their own personal schemes of profit. The Greeks ought not to feel surprised at the low estimation in which they are now held. It is entirely their own fault. They have hawked about their nationality at Munich, Paris, and St Petersburg, for illicit gains in a falling market at a very unpatriotic price.
Yet we collect from the newspapers published at Athens, that a considerable number of well-educated men of all parties, while they acknowledge the degraded state of their country, assert that the whole blame ought to be ascribed to the three protecting powers. Many of these patriots, it seems, are nevertheless in the receipt of large salaries from the public treasury; yet, though they feel that they are themselves destitute of the patriotism necessary to lighten the burdens of their country, they take the liberty of supposing that Lord Palmerston had the power of making all Greeks honest men by the magic of a protocol. We are not going to waste the time of our readers, as the Greek Senate and House of Representatives have wasted the resources of the country, by exposing the childishness of modern Greek political logic. If the descendants of Lucian’s contemporaries can find relief in their present degradation, by swallowing any dose of vanity they can mix for themselves, we have no wish to deprive them of the solace. But we cannot refrain from advising them to try some other remedy to remove the evils that are undermining the national strength and character. Instead of seeking for apologies to excuse their vices, they had better commence reforming their vicious habits.
Nothing has so much retarded the progress of the Greek race as the inconceivable vanity and unbounded presumption of the class who make letters a profession. Those who believe in the unmixed purity of the Hellenic blood might cite this besotted pride, after two thousand years of national degradation, as a proof that the Greeks of the present day are lineal descendants of those who sold their country to the Macedonians and the Romans, as they have lately attempted to sell it to the Russians. An admixture of foreign blood would probably have infused into the people a wish to look forward to a glorious future, instead of leaving them to gaze at a reflection of the past, distorted by their own senile visual orbits, at moments when action, not contemplation, is their business.
The strange manner in which the modern Greeks misrepresent history for the gratification of their national vanity, is well displayed in their ecclesiastical history. We will select one anecdote from the History of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, written by Malaxos, one of the Greek logiotatọi of the sixteenth century. His work was first published by Martin Crusius in his Turco-Græcia, and has lately been reprinted in the new edition of the Byzantine historians, in the course of publication at Bonn.
The Greeks are in the habit of boasting that their Church preserved their nationality under the Turks. Considering the subserviency of the great body of the Greek clergy during that period, and the readiness with which they acted as spies and policemen for the Othoman government, we own that we entertain a very different opinion. We think it would be nearer the truth to assert that the people, having perpetuated their existence by the toleration of their conquerors, preserved their nationality by their municipal organisation, and that this preservation of their nationality was the cause of their ecclesiastical establishment surviving. Mohammed II. reconstituted the patriarchate of Constantinople, after he had conquered the city, merely as a branch of the Othoman administration. Mr Masson and other enthusiasts fancy they can discern Presbyterian doctrines in the Greek Church. It may be the case. We have heard that chemists find gold in strawberries; but the gold rarely sits heavy on the stomachs of those who eat strawberries, and we opine that the Presbyterian doctrines of the Greek Church never prevent its votaries from worshipping images. So, in the anecdote we are going to extract from the Patriarchal History, we find that the Greeks regard violations of truth and honour as venial offences, if not absolutely meritorious acts, whenever they are supposed to have turned to the profit of their ecclesiastical establishment.
“During the reign of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, when Toulphi Pasha was grand vizier,[[133]] the attention of the Sublime Porte was called to the circumstance that the duty of the caliph of the Mohammedan faith required the destruction of all places of worship belonging to Infidels in every city which the true believers had taken with the sword. Now, as Mohammed II. had taken Constantinople by storm, it was the sultan’s duty to destroy all the Christian churches within the walls; and all the plagues and fires which had desolated the city, and which, it was observed, generally consumed more Turkish than Greek property, evidently arose from the Divine anger at the neglect of this important command of the Prophet. Sultan Suleiman was said to have consulted the mufti on the necessity of only tolerating places of worship for the Christians without the walls; and it was believed that the mufti had delivered a fetva, authorising the destruction of all the Greek churches in Constantinople. Sultan Suleiman then issued an order to his grand vizier, commanding him to carry the fetva into execution. At this time Jeremiah was patriarch of Constantinople.