STATE OF GREECE. (Hansard, 27 April 1847)

§ LORD J. MANNERS

said, the noble Lord the Prime Minister, on the first week of the Session, told them that whatever differences there might be among the people of England on most questions, there was at all times great apathy existing with regard to our foreign policy; and he told them also of the difficulties which those who were entrusted with our foreign policy had to meet with in fulfilling the important duties committed to their charge. But he thought, if there ever was a time when apathy and indifference might be changed into anxiety and curiosity, they might expect that the condition of Greece would now call forth these feelings. The expectations which were raised when England, at the instance of the late Mr. Canning, took a leading part in the expected regeneration of Greece, together with the disastrous European consequences which would ensue if the present reign of imbecility and cruelty, and extravagance, of all sorts, were permitted to continue, must be his excuse for venturing to ask the attention of the House to a subject which he was aware was rather alien from their tastes and dispositions. What Greece was expected to become when England joined in effecting her emancipation from the yoke of the Turks, must be well known to them all. The fertility of her soil, the genius of her people, and the heroism displayed in her ancient people, all conspired to encourage the hope that Greece at no distant day would assume a high place among the nations of Europe. What her condition now was, he would very shortly proceed to tell. In 1832, when the King of Bavaria 24 accepted the throne of Greece in favour of his younger son, it was stipulated that a constitution should be given to the Greeks, and the Three great Powers, France, England, and Russia, advanced a loan of 800,000l. each, the interest of which was to be repaid out of the first instalments that came into the national exchequer. Since that time eleven years passed away without either of these stipulations being fulfilled. The Greeks obtained no constitution—the Bavarian oligarchy ruled in the land—a system of cruelty and extortion was practised generally among the people, while the interest of the loan had not been in any instance whatever paid. However, in 1843, Count Nesselrode, writing to the Russian Ambassador at Athens, employed the following terms:— The Greek Government declared that the interest of the loan should take precedence of all other charges, and therefore he instructed the ambassador to require that the advance then due should be repaid by the 1st of July next. As to the future condition of the country, that must be matter for grave and serious consideration with the Three Powers, in order to avert the total ruin and destruction of the nation. On the part of England our Government was equally active; and an energetic note was despatched by the Foreign Minister upon the subject; but he was sorry to say that they failed in all their endeavours to induce them to fulfil their stipulations, and England was forced to pay 40,000l. a year as interest on the Greek loan. But at that period the Greek people, worn out and tired with the long series of oppressions which had been perpetrated upon them—worn out with the delays which they had experienced in the fulfilment of the stipulations made to them—rose as one man, and by a bloodless revolution, conducted with less disturbance and anger than had ever been witnessed in any other revolution in modern times, they succeeded in obtaining what they had so long stipulated for, and a constitution was conceded. They all knew with what delight and hope the settlement of that once formidable question was received in Europe. They all knew the terms in which Lord Aberdeen spoke of the efforts made by the Greek people, and the moderation of their character; and he naturally entertained the hope and belief that the future affairs of Greece and of its Government would be carried on according to those principles on which the Minister of the King promised that he would act in future. But he grieved to say, that ever since the time of 25 the relinquishment of office by Mavrocordato, in 1844, the condition of Greece, so far from improving, was as bad as it had been at any previous period; and the accounts which were now received from day to day revealed a system of violence, of extortion, and of various outrages committed against life and property, while the expectations of improvement held out in 1843 had not hitherto been fulfilled. He believed he should be able to show, by reference to authentic papers, that these outrages were committed, not only by the tacit sanction of the authorities, but under the orders of the constituted authorities themselves—by the fearful and lamentable violence of the soldiers—with the violation of the constitution—and by the open and avowed influence of other Powers, or at least of one other Power, in the political management of the country. The condition of Greece in 1847 was such as to create astonishment and regret in the mind of every gentleman who was interested in the fate of that country, and was such as to decide an English House of Commons to express an opinion—he hoped a unanimous opinion—of reprobation and horror. He should now proceed to show that the constituted authorities connived at and were themselves the perpetrators of these extraordinary cruelties and outrages against life and property. He found that M. Crizeis, the Governor of Etolia, addressing M. Coletti, used these remarkable expressions:— After having presented this statement to the Ministers, it is now my duty to observe, that it is absolutely essential the Government should take prompt and efficacious means to remedy this state of things, or otherwise I request the Government to accept my resignation; because it is repugnant to me to remain in the government of a province where the officers in command, whether designedly or otherwise, excite the people to rebellion, compel them to take up arms against the Government, or do anything to relieve themselves from that oppression, personal, material, and moral, with which the officers endeavour to crush them. He held in his hand a petition presented to the Greek Chamber from Patras, authenticated by all the leading inhabitants of the place. That petition stated that— The members of the family Dimeoi, arrested by the Mirarque (the Government officer), were subjected to the torture for three days, and all their effects sold. Dimetri Nicalo Copulo, accused of an insignificant robbery three years ago, was put to the torture and expired soon after. A petition presented to the King from Messina contained the following passage:— 26 Fifty citizens dragged without excuse from the bosom of their families, and thrown into a damp and loathsome dungeon, deploring their loss of liberty, that last worldly blessing, cast them-themselves on your mercy. Sire, the tortures we have undergone are unheard of and horrible; some of us suspended by the feet; others, with their legs and arms bound, are laid upon the ground, and blocks of stone placed on their chests, their flesh torn, and limbs mutilated. It also appeared that— At Lamia, on the 26th of November last, two gendarmes and three soldiers entered the village of Daitza, where they took and imprisoned the authorities, and then having entered the cottages belonging to two men, Agrosloti Galatopoulo and Christo Talana, seized the women, whom they treated with a brutality too horrible to describe, and then pillaged the house. He found likewise, that, on the 3rd of September, 1846, the commandant of the 5th battalion wrote to the Minister of War on brigandage in Acarnania. He said— I likewise determined to report to the Government, on the most proofs in my power, all those who were in any way favourable to the system; but I am compelled to declare, upon my honour, that brigandage is chiefly excited and countenanced by the employés of the Government at Vanitza, who are urged on by a well-known head, and guided by views and interests of a private nature. The Minister knows full well that during the brief existence of my mission I was deprived of a military force sufficient for the exigences of the service, as well as of the presence of a civil officer. In the more recent accounts from Athens, he found the following most extraordinary statement, under the date of the 10th of February, 1847:— If brigandage has for a long time desolated Acarnania, Eusytania does not suffer less from acts committed, not by brigands, but by the chief of the moveable column, the Captain Mercuditi. We have before our eyes letters which give a detailed and revolting description of the tortures and exactions committed by this officer, in the villages of Spinassa, of Klitzo, of Fourna, &c. The population of this province, which at all times has been distinguished by the gentleness of its manners, its application to labour, and exemplary submission, is reduced to despair. Since the time when placed under the administration of the famous Galini, she indignantly sees herself exposed to a system of persecution of which she has lost the memory since the end of Ali Pacha's Government. The fact was, he believed, that the outrages committed on the Greeks formerly by the Turks were greatly exceeded by the outrages now committed on them by their own Government. To come to a later period, the 10th of April, he found under that date an account of some important proceedings that had taken place in the important province of Laconia:— Grave events have occurred in Laconia. One 27 of the most important towns of the Peloponessus, the port of exports for the productions of the rich province of Lacedæmon, Gythion, has been sacked and partly destroyed in a collision which took place on the occasion of the municipal elections between the Mavromichalis and the Tzaratahis, two families who both rank among the friends of the present system. The House might perhaps be inclined to say, that an election squabble was not so uncommon an event in England as to induce them to take much notice of it; but he would venture to say, that it was very seldom indeed that election squabbles in England proceeded so far as to the burning of a town. But he would call the attention of the House to the fact by whose authority this was done. There could be no doubt that the constituted authorities had interfered; and the House would then see how they interfered:— There were two Government vessels lying off Gythion; the officers and crew espoused the cause of General Tzanetakis, so did the governor of the province. But this combination of the authorities excited the anger of the friends of M. Mavromichali, who, not feeling themselves strong enough to sustain the fight with success, called to their assistance M. Mavromichali, the deputy's nephew. He arrived at Gythion, at the head of a troop, occupied some houses and fortified them. General Oganetaki, who lives in the town, did the same, and occupied several points. The governor orders Mavromichali's people to quit the town, and proscribes them. Meanwhile the mirasque of gendarmerie arrives with two companies of light troops, and two detachments of gendamerie, and all the authorities meet in Council on the 29th of March. The governor and naval officers declare in favour of the general; the mirasque, and the military officers, stick to their candidate. (The poor voters never seem to be thought of at all.) Next day the polling commences—I beg pardon— the signal of hostilities is given, and the vessels of war, at four o'clock in the afternoon, open a cannonade upon the house occupied by Mavromichali's people, and some of the houses are destroyed. The firing ceases at sunset; but is replaced by a very active fusillade, which lasts till morning, between the houses occupied by the two parties. On the morning of the 31st the ships recommence firing, and make a terrible destruction. The result was, that the town was almost altogether destroyed—the citizens fled for refuge to the ships, or where they could; and the last accounts he had received ended by saying, "that this flourishing commercial town presented the appearance of a ruined city." He would now come to the second point, to the outrages which had been committed upon the constitution that was granted in 1843. Here he must guard himself against its being supposed that he imagined no country could be well and happily governed unless they had a constitution. But that was not the point 28 at issue here. The people had been promised a constitution, and they had received a constitution; he would proceed to show how that constitution had been dealt with. He found that the municipal revenues of Athens, which had been respected by the Turks themselves, and which amounted to 8,000 drachmas a year, had been seized and squandered year by year by the Government; and not a penny of it was expended in the improvement or the advancing of the town, for which it was originally intended. A similar course had been pursued with respect to the revenues of other towns. At the last election, Mavrocordato, who was admitted to be the first Greek statesman of the day, even by his bitterest opponents, was elected for four distinct places, and yet he was turned out by a vote of the Chamber from all his seats; and thus prevented from giving the weight of his influence, his knowledge, and his high character to the deliberative assembly of his countrymen. And now he would come to more recent instances. He found that a Pretorian band—for he could call it by no other name—commanded by John Costa, was kept up illegally for two years, till on the 18th of February, 1847, it was condemned by an adverse vote of the Chambers. For two years it had been kept up contrary to the constitution, contrary to everything by which a constitutional and representative Government was maintained; but at the end of two years, on February 18, 1847, a majority of the Chamber—49 to 40—withheld the grant of money for its aid, and decreed an abrogation of this band. In the speech of M. Coletti, which he delivered on the 9th of February, 1846, in defending himself against the charges which had repeatedly been brought against his Government, he, with a frankness which one might be permitted to admire, expressed himself in the following terms:— Formerly, these abuses were committed even in the capital, in the Government offices; and it was by the means of these illicit profits that they were enabled to raise splendid mansions, that they gave balls, where tea, coffee, and sweetmeats were offered in profusion; and now great complaints are made because 600 or 1,000 indigent persons are sent into the provinces to collect the revenue and gain the means of subsistence. And what are these men? They scarcely commit any abuses; and when they do so, it is only to the amount of a few drachmas. He now came to that part of his case which was, perhaps, more directly interesting to the Members of the English House of Commons—he meant the financial part 29 of his argument. He might here say that England, having paid 40,000l. a year from its own finances, on account of the mismanagement of Greece, had a clear right to make its voice heard. He did not wish to go far hack upon this subject, or to expose that system of mismanagement which the despatches of Lord Aberdeen so fully explained; he would only go hack as far as 1846. He found, in a debate in the Chamber of Deputies in February, 1846, that the Minister of Finance said— That he came to tell them that the Treasury Department was completely disorganized—that there were no accounts of the revenue or expenditure—and that he could not furnish to the Chamber anything in the shape of a budget, on account of the dishonesty of the public functionaries —that millions were due to the State, and he did not know by whom. On the 18th of February, 1846, the same Minister observed— Imagine, Sir, that the Minister of Finance cannot obtain any knowledge of the state of the country—that he is entirely ignorant of its resources; you may, therefore, judge what must be the state of the revenue; in these few words I have proved to you in what ignorance I have been kept during the short period of my administration. He was very much afraid, from what had recently transpired in Greece, that the Minister of Finance had not improved in his knowledge of these subjects since he made that admission. In the budget which was brought forward immediately after this discussion of 1846, the foreign debt due to England, France, and Russia, was totally omitted; there was no mention whatever made of a debt that had gone on increasing from year to year; and the budget was presented as if that debt had no existence whatever. The total income of the country was then estimated at 14,475,299 drachmas, the expenditure at 14,786,546 drachmas, making a clear and avowed deficit of 300,247 drachmas. Then Lord Aberdeen, when he saw such a budget brought forward in the Chamber of Deputies, sent a despatch to Sir Edward Lyons, commenting upon it in a strong and marked manner. He said it falsified all notion of a severe economy being exercised, as was asserted by M. Coletti, and that it justified him in adhering to his resolution of applying for the half-year's interest of the Greek loan which was then due. He observed, that if this disordered state of their finances should continue, England would be compelled to take such measures as would appear to be necessary to put an end to such a state of things, and to provide that 30 the loan should no longer be squandered. Well, now, one would naturally have concluded, after such an expression of opinion on the part of a nobleman whose language the House well knew was always guarded and cautious on these matters—one would have imagined that after this strong expression of opinion, those who were entrusted with the finances of Greece would have devoted their best attention to their amelioration. But he regretted to say that quite the reverse had taken place. There was probably no country in Europe which had not noticed the extraordinary financial exhibition which was recently made at Athens. On the 3rd of February, 1847, the same Minister of Finance, talking of the rich and fertile province of Elis, followed it up with this statement:— I cannot, gentlemen, conceal from you any longer the truth; the robbery of the public revenues has surpassed all measure, and is carried on with an insane impudence. But is this the fault of the Minister? I did not know any of the candidates; they were all nominated in the lists presented by the deputies. I hardly know fifty employés out of the thousands who belong to my department; if each steals a small portion of the revenue, the diminution must naturally become considerable. Things have arrived it such a pitch that it is impossible for the Minister of Finance to put a check to the abuses." "'Then,'" said the Judge-Advocate of the Royal Court of Athens, 'in this case, Monsieur the Minister, you ought to resign;' and the sitting was closed in an uproar. What the Minister said might be a novel mode of paying official salaries; but he feared it was not very economical. Probably it was in the knowledge of every Gentleman in that House that recently a Committee had been appointed by the Chamber of Deputies to investigate six charges made against the Minister of Finance. Those six charges resolved themselves, however, into two: the first, the falsification of the revenue, which the Minister had admitted in the Chamber, and given his explanation of; and the second, the falsification of the averages by which the importation of corn into Greece was regulated. With regard to the latter, the duties on the importation of corn into Greece were regulated by the average prices at nine different markets, and it was the duty of the Minister to make public these averages; but from the month of August to the month of January last, the Minister of Finance had suspended the publication of the averages, and thereby occasioned the most serious and mischievous speculations in the corn trade. 31 The Committee of which he had spoken was constituted on the 20th of February, and presented its report on the 10th of March. It was a long and elaborate report, the reading of which he should be sorry to inflict upon the House; but in that report the Committee found the Minister guilty of the charges brought against him, and they were all but unanimous in coming to that conclusion. There was only one member of the Committee who had doubted as to the propriety of the course which the great majority adopted. Their report contained the following passage, which gave, he thought, very fairly, the all but unanimous opinion of the Committee:— The commission, convinced by the reasons above expressed that the Minister Ponyropoulos has knowingly committed these illegal acts, thinks it needless to inquire whether, besides the illegal tax which strikes the foreign grains, the Treasury has sustained a loss by the diminution of the duties on exportation. The effect, therefore, of the Minister's conduct had been to diminish the amount of duty which ought to have been paid: and the Committee asked the Chamber of Deputies to proceed to an impeachment. He was bound, however, to say, that in the Chamber of Deputies a small majority of eleven rejected the first part of the report; but in what position did the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Greece stand? He stood convicted by a Committee who had investigated the charges; and he stood absolved in the Chamber by a small majority. As to the other charge, the Minister, as he had already said, had admitted in his place in the Chamber that he had presented a false report of the revenue; but he had at the same time expressed a hope that his patriotic reason for so doing would induce the Chamber to sanction his conduct; and the reason which he gave was, that a surplus revenue would have been shown over the estimated expenditure, and that foreign Powers would then be justified in expecting that some of the interest on their loan would be paid. Now, if he had not known that fact upon the most unquestionable authority, he would hardly have believed it; it was so difficult to believe that any one filling an office of such high trust and importance could have ventured to state in the Chamber of Deputies that he had falsified the public accounts in order to cheat the country which at a considerable sacrifice had enabled Greece to keep its head up amongst the nations of Europe. So to do did seem 32 to require such an extravagant degree of assurance, that he could not help thinking there was some mistake; still the authority admitted of no doubt. Now, after what had occurred in the early part of the Session, and considering the delicate nature of our relations with our neighbours across the Channel, he should have been glad if he could have concluded his statement without noticing the part which that country had taken in this matter. He alluded to the unhappy influence which France had exercised in the councils of Greece. It was useless to blink the fact. If he thought that he could at all advance the satisfactory settlement of the question by omitting to take any notice of French influence in Greece, he should be glad to do so; but he could see no such prospect, and he thought that the best way of meeting the difficulties which that influence threw in the way of a better state of things, was to watch and counteract it. He must say that the conduct pursued by France, and avowed by the French people, stood in very unfavourable contrast to the conduct pursued by England, and avowed and sanctioned by the English people. Nor could he refrain from expressing here his high estimation of the great services of Sir E. Lyons, our Minister in Greece. It was no more than his due that he should be told in the House of Commons that so long as he persisted in the course which he had hitherto pursued, he would receive the support not only of the Foreign Minister for the time being, but also the support of the popular assembly of this country. Lord Aberdeen, writing to Sir E. Lyons, in 1843, said— In the whole of your proceedings at this important crisis, you will constantly bear in mind that the good of Greece alone is the principle which guides and animates Her Majesty's Government. We desire to establish no British influence, and we equally deprecate the establishment of any other exclusive national influence in Greece. We wish to see Greece independent, and under the auspices of a sound and well-regulated constitutional system of government, in which each power in the State shall have its due weight and influence, growing daily in strength, in credit, and in prosperity. The exercise of any extraneous and exclusive influence over her counsels, can but tend to retard that growth. That was the language of Lord Aberdeen in 1843; his only wish was to keep free from foreign control the waters of the Pirâus; and yet, in 1846, Coletti, the Prime Minister of Greece, was heard boasting in the Chamber that it was France who gave them so many presents; 33 it was she who kept her schools open to their children—she who placed her fleets at their disposal. But perhaps it might be thought, after the course he had pursued, no great dependence could he placed on the statements of Coletti; but he was now about to call the attention of the House to a much more important personage in this most complicated and unhappy drama. M. Guizot had addressed the French Chambers on the subject.