Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/146

140 Then followed in rapid succession the declaration of a compulsory armistice, the consequent destruction of the Turkish fleet by the battle of Navarino in November, the dismissal of the ambassadors from Constantinople, the war declared in April, 1828, on Russian grounds, by the czar, and the advance of his conquering armies to the conquest of Adrianople in August, 1829. At that point the emperor Nicholas perceived from many signs, and doubtless among them from the attitude of England, the prudence of a halt. But to him and to his country, aided by the good offices of Prussia, redounded the final honor of including in the Russian treaty of peace the provisions of July, 1827. The tenth article of the Treaty of Adrianople is the international charter of the independent existence of Greece. Though the sultan had vaguely agreed to the concession before the treaty, at the instance of England and France, yet his willingness to comply may be set down, in the main, to the formidable nearness of the Russian army.

A British subject can, as such, find little pleasure in tracing the later stages of the history. It is indeed easy to understand why in 1829, with Constantinople opened to the Russian armies, the British government should have been disturbed; but it is not so easy either to comprehend or to justify the rapid change of tone and feeling which followed the accession of the Duke of Wellington to power in January, 1828; and which stigmatized the battle of Navarino, in the royal speech at the commencement of the session, as an untoward, though it was certainly an unexpected, event. An error, not perhaps more striking, but yet more grievous in its consequences, was the narrow amount of territory accorded to the new kingdom, as if to abate at once the high hopes and rebuke the noble daring of its people, and to condemn the infant State to a deplorable weakness and perpetual tutelage.

Finlay says with truth that the revolution of Greece was the people's revolution. They exhibited a tenacity and valor, not less than that of the American colonists in their famous revolt, which some despotic sovereigns showed themselves very ready to assist. We need not resent that assistance. It brought to a sharper and speedier crisis a war, which would otherwise have been interminable between the two most tenacious and self-reliant races in the world. The same service was done to Turkey by the three powers; and from higher motives. Their abstinence would not have replaced the sultan in a real sovereignty. Fortresses taken, armies discomfited, would have seemed to be, but would not have been, the end. The mountain and the flood would have given refuge to their hardy children, and the contest would have been dispersedly but resolutely maintained by a race, to whom as yet, except in the Black Mountain, no equals in valor have appeared among the enslaved populations of the East. But if this was a notable resemblance, there was another yet more notable contrast, between the cases of America and Greece. The populations directly interested were not very different in number. Of quick and shrewd intellect there certainly was no lack in either. But the solid statesmen, the upright and noble leaders, who sprang forth in abundance to meet the need in the one case, were sadly wanting in the other. The colonists of America had been reared under a system essentially free, and they rose in resentment against an invasion of freedom but partial and comparatively slight; the revolted Hellenic population had for four centuries been crushed and ground down under a system, far from uniform in a thousand points, yet uniform only in this, that it was fatal to the growth of the highest excellence. It is in and by freedom only, that adequate preparation for fuller freedom can be made.

The uneasiness of Greece in its provisional condition, under Capodistrias as the president of a republican government, was extreme; and diplomacy still did it a service, greater than perhaps it knew, in offering, or promoting the offer of, its crown to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, first among the statesman-kings of his day, or perhaps his century. He accepted the Hellenic throne; but the intrigues of Capodistrias, in representing difficulties, and also in creating them, appear to have so far darkened the prospect as to have brought about his resignation. With that resignation passed away the hope of a brilliant infancy for Greece. The small number of princes, disposable for such a purpose as filling the Hellenic throne, was probably further reduced by the jealousies of reigning families and their States; and though the average capacity of the members of royal houses may be considerably above that of the community at large, but 