GREEK LOAN CONVENTION. (Hansard, 8 August 1832)

§ Lord Althorp
moved the Second Reading of the Greek Loan Convention Bill.

§ Mr. Best
wished to observe, that the noble Secretary of State, on a former occasion, had said that he entertained great hopes, that although this country entered into this guarantee, it would not ultimately be called upon to pay the whole of this money; but the noble Lord did not very satisfactorily explain the grounds of his opinion. He (Mr. Best) was, on the contrary, much afraid, that we should be required to pay the whole sum without the least prospect of its being repaid. Greece was at this moment in a state of 1264 anarchy, and how the noble Lord could entertain any hope that a country, in such a situation, would be able, in the course of a year or two, to pay even the interest of this money seemed incomprehensible. The hon. member for Middlesex had given notice of a motion for a Return of the sums which had been already advanced by this country to Greece; that Return had not yet been produced, but he presumed it was intended to repay that sum out of the first instalment of this loan. There would also be a sum of money paid to Turkey on account of the new territory annexed to Greece by the extension of the new boundary line. The amount of this sum had not been stated; perhaps the noble Lord would inform the House what it was. Besides these two charges, there would be other charges to be defrayed; for instance, for erecting fortifications on the new frontiers; whether ultimately to be demolished, as in the case of the fortifications erected at so much expense to this country on the Belgian frontiers, was not ascertained. These several charges would completely absorb the whole of this money. To judge by these protocols, it was expected by Greece that the greater part of this money should be employed in putting that country into a state of defence, and relieving it for a time from the pressure of taxation; but if the money was to be applied to the discharge of former advances, how would it be possible so to benefit Greece, as to enable her to meet hereafter the interest of this loan. Besides, there was another charge imposed upon this money—namely, the relief proposed to be afforded to the refugee Greeks who should have returned to their native country in a state of destitution. When all these charges were defrayed, what residue could there possibly be to be applied for the improvement of the country? Thus were they now called upon to vote, under the delusive form of a guarantee, an actual grant of 800,000l. to Greece—and for what? It had not been shown to be for the interest of this country that we should shackle ourselves with such a charge. It had been said, that we were interested in establishing the independence of Greece, in order that the piratical system, so prejudicial to our commerce, might be put down; but there were surely other modes by which piracy might be suppressed in the Mediterranean, which would be much less expensive to this 1265 country. He could not, therefore, consent, to this money being advanced, unless the noble Lord could state some more specific reasons than had yet been given, and could show that this country was more strongly interested in this arrangement than she now appeared to be. There was one other point in this arrangement which required further explanation—namely, as to the choice of Prince Otho for the sovereign of Greece. He did not mean to draw any comparison between that Prince and Prince Leopold, with regard to their personal merits; but there was one circumstance which demanded particular consideration, and which constituted a very serious objection to the choice now made, and that was, that Prince Otho was a minor; and there was no provision made to prevent any future sovereign of that country being also a minor. But, in the present state of anarchy in Greece, what was likely to be the consequence of a disputed succession. Even in old and firm established governments, many inconveniences arose from the minority of the sovereign; how much more must that inconvenience be felt in so new and unsettled a country as Greece. Under all these circumstances, he hoped that the noble Lord would postpone this question to a time when it could be better discussed. He lamented to see the House so thin, and regretted that a question of this sort should be introduced at such a period of the Session, and at such an hour. It was a circumstance almost unexampled in legislation. If this money were paid away under these circumstances, he should be almost inclined to despair of any future retrenchment in the expenditure of the public money; and feeling that they had no sufficient grounds for proceeding with this measure, he would conclude by moving, that the Bill be read a second time this day six months.

Sir Francis Vincent
seconded the Amendment, because he thought the Convention would prove onerous to this country, and that it was not calculated to secure the object which it had in view.

Colonel Evans
said, he understood that the bargain contained in this Convention was almost confirmed before the present Government came into office; and, therefore, it might, perhaps, amount to a breach of faith, if the terms of the bargain were now infringed. He was, therefore, quite prepared to support the Bill.

Mr. Hume
said, this was an act of the 1266 Holy Alliance, of which we had the honour to be one. The speculation now, with respect to Greece, was to send them a king, for which they had never asked. It would be better to leave them to select one for themselves, or allow them to be without a king altogether. To him it seemed a most Quixotic arrangement, and one to which our Government had been seduced by the wiles and artifices of Russia.

§ Mr. Ruthven
considered the guarantee the same thing as absolutely giving the money; and he thought that this country had already sufficient loans of its own at home, without meddling with any foreign one. He should, therefore, oppose the Bill.

§ Mr. Courtenay
should not divide with his hon. friend. He had made an attempt the other night to get a short postponement, and though he had failed in that, he could not vote against the measure altogether. He concurred in thinking that we had gone too far in this matter to recede. He could not admit that the late Government was pledged to this particular guarantee to prince Otho; but certainly the transaction, beginning with Mr. Canning, and continued by the Duke of Wellington, had gone too far to admit of its being now broken off, though that arrangement was made by them—not with Greece itself, but with Prince Leopold. In voting for the Bill, he felt that he was voting away 800,000l.; for he could not understand how they could ever get the money back. The only ground upon which his noble friend built any hope was, that we might realize a revenue from Greece, because the revenues of the Ionian islands had been augmented. But how were those islands governed? Ministers did not send out a boy to govern them; but a man—a very full grown man. The noble person destined to take the throne, if he might so express himself, of those islands, had royal blood in his veins, of a much more ancient house than the house of Bavaria. Let that noble person go to Greece, and be the king of that country, instead of the youth Otho, and there would be greater security for the money being repaid.

§ Viscount Palmerston
knew, that we might have found in this country candidates for the throne of Greece, with royal blood in their veins, and knew that it was not necessary to have gone far, not further, 1267 indeed, than the opposite bench, to have found a person not only with royal, but with imperial blood in his veins; and he could not help expressing some surprise that his right hon. friend, who was himself descended from a Greek emperor, should show so little sympathy for the Greeks of the present day; and that he should have opposed himself to any proposition for their advantage. When he was required to state the amount of the Greek revenue, he begged to say, that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whoever he might be, was called upon to anticipate the amount of revenue of this country even for one year only, he always expressed, with some degree of hesitation and doubt, his anticipations of the next year's income; and to call, therefore, upon him, to act the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for Greece, and to anticipate what would be the revenue of that country, not for the next year only, but for the next six years, was to require him to undertake a task somewhat difficult, and one which, with all deference, he must decline, seeing that the ablest financiers could not perform it in the best regulated states. His firm conviction, however, was, that the revenue of Greece, under a stable Government, would be amply sufficient to meet the demands upon it, and he believed, that the whole of the loan would not ultimately be required to be raised. At the same time, he would not ask the House to come to this vote upon any such supposition; because the engagement went to the full amount of the loan. One hon. Gentleman had asked, what was the amount of the compensation to be paid to Turkey on account of the cession of territory consequent upon the extension of the northern frontier of Greece: the total amount, he believed, would not exceed 500,000l.: it had not been officially stated by our ambassador at Constantinople, but he believed that was the sum agreed upon between the ministers of the Three Powers and the court of the Sultan. That sum would amount to very little more than half of the first instalment out of the three which were to be paid. The first instalment would be 800,000l. (the whole amount of the loan being 2,400,000l.) he, therefore, did not anticipate that more than the first and second instalments would for some time be required. The hon. Gentleman said, that he did not see the value of these frontiers; and he observed, that we had already been at very 1268 great expense in providing a frontier and erecting a barrier for Belgium, a great part of which we were now going to demolish; and so here he insinuated, we were also incurring great expense for the purpose of erecting a barrier for Greece, which, he meant to infer, we should, at some future time, find it necessary in like manner to demolish. But the hon. Gentleman forgot, that in this instance, nature had made the barrier, having heaved up a large and lofty chain of mountains, more effectual than any fortifications of art, and the time was not likely to come when we should be called upon to pull down that chain of mountains. If the hon. Gentleman would only consult the map, and look at the nature of the country, he would find that the acquisition of the two districts which this new line of frontier gave to Greece, was of the utmost importance to that country. The people of those two districts, Arcanania and Ætolia, were essentially Greek. They were that part of the Greek nation which never, even in the most prosperous time of Turkish power, submitted to its domination. They formed the most warlike portion of the Greek forces, and to have placed them under the dominion of the Turks, would, in the first place, have been impossible; and if possible, would have been a cruel act. A nominal transfer would not have been followed by submission; a continual mountain warfare would have been kept up by the people against the Turks; and so far from such an arrangement effecting the pacification of Greece, it would have sown the seeds of perpetual discord in that country. It was, therefore, not only an act of justice to attach those districts to Greece, but it was most essential to the attainment of the object for which our interference originally took place. But, said the hon. Gentleman, what interest had England in this matter? Why should we interfere about Greece? And that opinion, he was sorry to say, had been expressed by the hon. member for Middlesex also, who had described our proceedings with respect to Greece, as a Quixotic interference, uncalled for by the interests of this country. That was easily said in the year 1832, when the Greeks had been emancipated from Turkish slavery by the arms of the Three Powers concerned in this Convention; but if that language had been held some years ago, when the Greeks were struggling for their independence, 1269 and when the whole of Europe was warmly interested in their fate, and when there was hardly a man who did not sympathize with their sufferings, and demonstrate his sympathy by that most indisputable of all proofs, subscribing his money—if such language as had fallen from the hon. member for Middlesex, had been then uttered by any man, that hon. Member would have been the first to reprobate it with his utmost indignation. It was only necessary to look back at the state of the question, when our interference began, to see that then it was the general opinion, that Europe had an interest in the emancipation of Greece. But taking the most vulgar view of the matter, one solely of profit and loss, was it not notorious, that our commerce was experiencing continual interruption, and exposed to most serious excesses, from the system of piracy which arose from the struggle, and from the want of a settled government in Greece? And would the hon. Gentleman say that this was not a matter of very serious importance to this country? But he could not so narrow his views as to judge of a great political question by looking at the two sides of a money account, or even to estimate the merits of the arrangement by the question whether this country might or might not ultimately have to pay part of the interest of this loan. He could not think that England, in restoring that nation, be it ever so barbarous now, and be the people as full of faults as possible (and it was very natural that they should be so, seeing that they had lain for centuries in abject slavery, under a Government not remarkable for intellectual attainments, or amiable deportment towards its dependents)—be the people ever so barbarous now, he could not conceive that England in restoring them to a state of independence, by which their native home again became the seat of civilization, and a living member of the nations of Europe—he could not conceive, that England in doing that, served no interest of her own. The interests of civilization, the interests of commerce, and the interests of political independence, were all the interests of England, and all had been signally promoted by the emancipation of Greece. But, he said further, that we had no choice; at least, the only choice was this—whether we would assist to free Greece in conjunction with Russia and France, or allow Russia to make the country depend- 1270 ent on her. He asked whether we ought to have left Russia to settle this question single-handed? If she, unaided, had rescued Greece from the dominion of Turkey, would she not have acquired a paramount claim to the eternal gratitude of the Greeks; and would she not thus have established an influence which would have made Greece practically a Russian province? He did not think that those Gentlemen who had dissented from this vote would have been prepared to approve of such a result; and if not, then the only course left was the course we had followed. First, we united with Russia; and then we got France, the other great maritime power of Europe, to join us. It was, therefore, both for the honour and for the permanent and well-understood interests of this country, that England should have contributed to rescue Greece from the dominion of the Turks, and to restore her to her rank among the civilized nations of Europe. But the hon. Gentleman said, "You have given her a boy for a Sovereign; and have not established the Salic law;" and, said the hon. Gentleman, speaking in a country in which in all human probability the next reign would be that of a queen—"It would be impossible Greece could prosper, if at any time the throne should devolve upon a female." He was astonished at this objection. Looking at times past, and remembering that some of the most glorious periods of our annals had been the reigns of females, he was utterly surprised to hear such an objection. The hon. Gentleman said, "I do not object to a male filling the throne of Greece; but if a female should ever reign, then there must be a disputed succession." He did not exactly understand the logic of that argument, nor could he perceive what was the necessary connexion between a disputed succession and a female reign. He admitted that an objection might arise from the youth of the prince chosen for the throne of Greece. It would certainly have been desirable to have selected a prince of such an age as would have enabled him at once to assume the reins of Government at the moment of his arrival. But, after having endeavoured in vain to find such a person, with the other requisite recommendations, the Three Powers ultimately felt that, taking all things together, there was no choice so much to be preferred, as that of Prince Otho, It was, in the first place, desirable 1271 that the person chosen should belong to a reigning house; without any prejudice in favour of particular families; because it was desirable that the sovereign of Greece should be connected with some family reigning over a state of some political consequence in Europe. In the next place, the person to be selected should be one who would be able to bring with him adequate means for consolidating the Greek throne; such as pecuniary resources, able councillors, and a small body of troops. In the first place, then, prince Otho belonged to a royal family, the most considerable of the second order of the states of Europe: next, he belonged to a country of free institutions, and that was important. At least he should not have wished the person destined to reign over Greece, to come from a country of despotic institutions, and who necessarily would have carried with him (especially if he had arrived at man's estate) ideas, as to the forms and principles of government, inconsistent with those entertained by the nation over whom he was destined to reign. Then, further, Prince Otho went accompanied by three persons, whose names he did not feel at liberty to mention, though he believed they were already fixed upon, of great eminence and talent, of much experience in public affairs, and peculiarly well qualified to administer the affairs of Greece and to establish order in that country. For these reasons he thought that the choice made of prince Otho was, under all the circumstances, the best that could be made: particularly as the king of Bavaria, from the commencement of the Greek revolution, had manifested great sympathy for the Greeks. Many Bavarians had given distinguished assistance to them, and thus a connexion had already been established between the Greek nation and Bavaria. But the hon. member for Middlesex said, he should wish the choice to have been left to the people of Greece, and he seemed to think that the Greeks would be better without any king at all. To suppose that, in a nation so divided by party-differences as Greece unquestionably was, after achieving its independence by individual exertions, rather than by union under one leading chief—to suppose that, in a nation so circumstanced, the people should agree to elect one of themselves to be their king, was to suppose that which was almost impossible. Such a consent could hardly be looked for in 1272 any country, but least of all in Greece. But so far from their not wishing to have Prince Otho for their king, he could assure the hon. Member, that there had been received from all parts of Greece thanks to the Three Powers for having selected Prince Otho; and addresses to Prince Otho himself, from most of the principal Greeks, expressing their satisfaction at the selection, and requesting him to proceed to their country with the least possible delay. Greece now felt, that peace and prosperity could only be obtained upon the arrival of her king. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Best) thought that Prince Otho anticipated a speedy return to Bavaria, because the prince had retained his present appanage. Now that appanage was retained expressly with the view to relieve the revenues of Greece for the present from the burthen of wholly supporting the king; and as to the expense of Prince Otho's court, he could assure the hon. Member, that, so far from being established upon a scale of splendid magnificence, it would be framed with the utmost moderation, and the greatest attention to economy. With regard to the original Greek loan, he begged to say, that nothing could be more true, than what was stated by his noble friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, namely, that almost the only chance the creditors of that loan had of recovering their money, was by Greece becoming permanently an independent state; and if this could not be done without raising this new loan, then no persons were more deeply interested in carrying the present arrangements into effect, than those who advanced the former loan. There would be no prospect of their ever recovering their money if, by the failure of the present arrangements, Greece were to relapse under the dominion of the Turks, or remain in her present state of anarchy. It had been said, that this was a new arrangement made by the present Ministry; but, far from that, he could not repeat too positively that the papers laid before the House by the last Government in 1830, showed most clearly that this was an engagement, previously entered into by the Three Powers by a protocol, which was a binding diplomatic instrument, and that this protocol was formally communicated by them to the government of Greece, which government acknowledged with thankfulness, as a proof that the Three Powers took an 1273 interest in the welfare of Greece, not only by sending it a king, but also by affording it the means of establishing him on his throne. But he had further proof of the position he was now arguing, besides the fact of this communication to the Greek government; though this he considered conclusive. If the engagement had been made with Prince Leopold personally, why should it have been formally communicated to the government of Greece at Napulia? If it were a personal engagement with Prince Leopold, why should these words appear, namely, "The Three Powers guarantee to the new state?"—to the "new state," be it observed, and not to "Prince Leopold." But what happened subsequently? The government of Greece applied to the Three Powers to make a pecuniary advance; and the Government of England did make an advance to Greece of 20,000l., which was to be repaid out of the loan when made. That was an answer to the hon. Gentleman who asked what money had been advanced to Greece; there was an advance of 20,000l. in 1830, which would be repaid out of the first instalment raised by the Greek government; therefore, so far from this vote having the effect of producing any expense to the public, he might be wrong, but he was convinced that we should not be called upon to pay any portion of the interest; it would actually enable us to get back the 20,000l. already advanced. It had been said, that we were undertaking this guarantee wholly to please Russia, and that, in the Greek arrangement, we were following blindly the policy, and doing the work, of the Holy Alliance. If he had any understanding of the meaning of that name "Holy Alliance," it was an engagement between sovereigns to dispose of nations without their consent, and intended to prevent the establishment of free institutions. Nothing could be more entirely different from the objects of the Holy Alliance than the engagement of the Three Powers to establish the independence of Greece. It was an engagement entered into to support the Greeks, then in a state of slavery, and while the Turks were waging against them a war of extermination—a war in which the utmost bravery, and the sacrifice of everything which made life valuable, were insufficient to enable the Greeks to contend successfully against their opponents;—it was an engagement to rescue a 1274 country long covered with darkness and immersed in barbarism, and to give it a new existence among the civilized nations of the world; it was an engagement for converting that country, which had for centuries been a political blank, into what he hoped it would some day become, a centre of civilization, a scat of commerce, a land of happiness and well-regulated freedom. He therefore thought that it was impossible to state two objects more entirely different from each other than the purposes for which the Holy Alliance, as it was called, was supposed to have been instituted, and the purposes of the Greek Treaty of 1826. However indisposed the House might be, to enter into guarantees of this kind, and however he might dislike and disapprove of such engagements in the abstract, yet he did trust that this was a case which the House would think ought to be made an exception to the general rule. That Parliament was bound by the engagement which the Crown had made, he would not say, for the very proposition which he was making was founded on the assumption that Parliament was free to adopt or to refuse it; but, in point of honour and good feeling, he trusted, the House would think that it ought to enable the Crown to conclude a transaction in which we had been honourably engaged for several years; while a regard for our national character, as well as for our commercial and political interests, ought to lead us to complete the settlement, which, in conjunction with the other Powers, we had honourably undertaken.