Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843

The Greek government enjoyed every possible advantage during the administration of these Bavarians. A loan of £.2,400,000, contracted under the guarantee of the three protecting powers, kept the treasury full; so that no plan for the improvement of Greece, or for enriching the Bavarians, was arrested for want of funds. We shall now pass in review what was done.

1. A good monetary system was established. The allies, it is true, supplied the metal, but the Bavarians deserve the merit of transferring as much of it as they could into their own pockets, in a very respectable coinage.

2. The irregular troops were disbanded, and many of them driven over the frontier into Turkey. The thing was very clumsily done; but, thank Heaven! it was done, and Greece was delivered from this horde of banditti.

3. Every Bavarian officer or cadet was promoted, and every Greek officer was reduced to a lower rank. We cannot venture to describe the rage of the Greeks, nor the presumption of the Bavarians.

4. An order of knighthood was created, of which the decorations were distributed in the following manner: One hundred and twenty-five grand crosses, and crosses of grand commanders, were divided as follows: The protecting powers received ninety-one, that is thirty a-piece if they agreed to divide fairly. The odd one was really given to Baron Rothschild, as contractor of the loan. The Bavarians took twenty-three. The Greeks received ten for services during the war of the revolution, and during the national assembly which accepted King Otho, and one was bestowed among the foreigners who had served Greece during the war with Turkey. Six hundred and fourteen crosses of inferior rank were distributed, and of these the Greeks received only one hundred and forty-five; so that really the protecting powers and the Bavarians reserved for themselves rather more than a fair proportion of this portion of the loan, especially if they expected the Greeks not to become bankrupt.

5. All the Greek civil servants of King Otho were put into light blue uniforms, covered with silver lace, at one hundred pounds sterling a-head. And, O Gemini! such uniforms! Those who have seen the ambassador of his Hellenic majesty at the court of St James's, at a levee or a drawing-room, will not soon forget the merits of his tailor.

6. Ambassadors were sent to Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Munich, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, and Constantinople, and Consuls-general to all the ends of the earth.

7. A council of state was formed.

8. The civil government was organized, and royal governors appointed in all the provinces, who maintain a direct correspondence with the minister of the interior.

9. A very respectable judicial administration was formed, and codes of civil and criminal procedure published.

10. The Greek Church was organized on a footing which rendered it independent of the patriarch at Constantinople without causing a schism. This is unquestionably the ablest act of Mr Maurer's administration, and it drew on him the whole hatred of Russia.

11. The communal and municipal system of Greece, the seat of the vitality of the Greek nation, was adopted as the foundation of the social edifice in the monarchy. It is true some injudicious Bavarian modifications were made; but time will soon consign to oblivion these delusions of Teutonic intellect.

12. The liberty of the press was admitted to be an inherent right of Greek citizens.

The five last-mentioned measures are entirely due to the liberal spirit and sound legal knowledge of Mr Maurer, who, if he had been restrained from meddling with diplomacy, and quarreling with the English and Russian ministers at Nauplia, would have been universally regarded as a most useful minister. But all the practical good Greece has derived from the Bavarians, is confined to a few of his acts.

The accession of Count Armansperg to power, opened a new scene. A certain number of Greeks were then admitted to high and lucrative employments, on condition that they would support the Bavarian system, and declare that their country was not yet fit for the enjoyment of constitutional liberty. The partizans of Mr Maurer were dismissed and sent back to Bavaria: a few good bribes were given to newspaper editors and noisy democrats; but the Bavarians were kept in the possession of the richest part of the spoil. Accordingly, the cry of the Greeks against Bavarian influence and Bavarian rapacity never ceased. Rudhart's government was a continuation of that of Armansperg, only with the difference that he leaned on a different foreign power for support. Neither Armansperg nor Rudhart conferred any benefit on Greece. They formed a phalanx or corps of veterans; but as they laid down no invariable rules for admission, but kept the door open as a means of creating a party among the military, this institution has become a scene of jobbing and abuse.

A law conferring a portion of land on every Greek family was passed; but as it was intended to serve political purposes, it was never put into general execution. A number of sales of national lands has been made under it, in direct violation of every principle of law and justice; and as detached pieces of the richest plains in Greece have been alienated in this way, the resources of the country will be found to have been very seriously diminished by this singular species of wholesale corruption.

Rudhart was compelled from his weakness to make one or two steps in the national path. He assembled the council of state, and called the provincial councils and the university into activity.

We have now arrived at the period when King Otho assumed the reins of government. From the year 1838 to the present day, he has been his own irresponsible prime minister; for the apparent ministers Zographos, Païkos, Maurocordatos and Rizos, have never enjoyed his unlimited confidence, nor have they been viewed with much favour by the people. Indeed, with the exception of Maurocordatos, they are men of inferior ability, and of no character or standing in the country. Any one who will take the trouble to read those portions of their diplomatic correspondence with the ministers of the allied powers at Athens, which have been published, will be convinced of their utter unfitness for the offices they have held. Let the reader contrast these precious specimens of inaccuracy and rigmarole, with the come-to-the-truth style of our own minister, or the sarcastic, let-us-go-quietly-over-your-reasoning style, in which the Russian minister answers them.

In order that our readers may form some idea of the manner in which King Otho has carried on the government for five years, we shall describe the political machine he has framed—name it we cannot; for it resembles nothing the world has yet seen amidst all the multifarious combinations of cabinet-making, which kings, sultans, krals, emperors, czars, or khans, have yet presented to the envious contemplation of aspiring statesmen. The king of Greece, it must be observed, is a monarch whose ministers are held by a fiction of law to be responsible; and the editor of an Athenian newspaper has been fined and imprisoned for declaring that this fiction is not a fact. These ministers are not permitted by King Otho to assemble together in council, unless he himself be present. The assembly would be too democratic for Otho's nerves. In short, the king has a ministry, but his ministers do not form a cabinet; his cabinet is a separate concern. Each minister waits on his majesty with his portfolio under his arm, and receives the royal commands. To simplify business, however, and make the ministers fully sensible of their real insignificancy, King Otho frequently orders the clerks in the public offices to come to his royal presence, with the papers on which they have been engaged; and by this means he shows the ministers, that though they are necessary in consequence of the fiction of law, they may be rendered very secondary personages in their own departments. If it were not a useless waste of time, we could lay before our readers instances of this singularly easy mode of doing business—instances too, which have been officially communicated to the allied powers. His majesty carried his love of performing ministerial duties so far, that for more than a year he dispensed entirely with a minister of finance, and divided the functions of that office among three of the clerks: no bad preparation for a national bankruptcy, we must allow—yet the protecting powers viewed this political vagary of his majesty with perfect indifference.

The most singular feature of King Otho's government is his cabinet, or, as the Greek newspapers call it, "the Camarilla." This cabinet has no official constitution; yet its members put their titles on the visiting cards which they leave, as advertisements of the existence of this irresponsible body, at the houses of the foreign ministers. It consists, or until the late financial difficulties deranged all the royal plans, it consisted, of four Bavarians and two Greeks. Its duty is to prepare projects of laws to be adopted by the different ministers, and to assist the king in selecting individuals appointed to public offices. This is the feature which excites the greatest indignation at Athens; the minister of war does not dare to promote a corporal; the minister of public instruction would tremble to send a village schoolmaster to a country demos, even at the expense of the citizens; and the minister of finance would not risk the responsibility of conferring the office of porter of the customhouse at Parras, before receiving the royal instructions how to act on such emergencies, and ascertaining what creature of the camarilla it was necessary to provide for.

We have already mentioned the council of state; it consists of about twenty individuals chosen by his majesty, a motley congregation—some cannot read—others cannot write—some came to Greece after the revolution was over—some, long after the king himself. This council is, by one of the fictions of law so common in the Hellenic kingdom, supposed to form a legislative council, and it is implied that it ought to be considered as tantamount to a representative assembly. Some of its members are most brave and respectable men, who have rendered Greece good service; but since they were decked out in silver uniforms, and received large salaries to form a portion of the court pageant, they have lost much of their influence in the country, either for good or evil. The king looks upon these patriotic members as an insignificant minority, or an ignorant majority, as the case may be, and he has more than once set aside the opposition of this council, by publishing laws rejected by a majority of its members. To speak a plain truth in rude phrase—the council of state is a farce.

King Otho, with his Greek ministers, his Bavarian cabinet, and his motley council of state, is therefore, to all appearance, a more absolute sovereign than his neighbour, Abdul Meschid. But we must now leave the royal authority, and turn our attention to an important chapter in the Greek question; one which nevertheless has not hitherto met with proper study either from the king, his allies, or the public in Western Europe—we mean the institutions of the Greek people.

The inhabitants of Greece consist of two classes, who, from having been placed for many ages in totally different circumstances, are extremely different in manners and in civilization. These are the population of the towns or the commercial class, and the inhabitants of the country or the agricultural class. The traders have usually been considered by strangers as affording the true type of the Greek character; but a very little reflection ought to have convinced any one, that the insecurity of the Turkish government, and the constant change in the channels of trade in the East, had given this class of the population a most Hebraical indifference to "the dear name of country." To the Fanariote and the Sciote, Wallachia or Trieste were delightful homes, if dollars were plentiful. But the agricultural population of Greece was composed of very different materials. We are inclined to consider them as the most obstinately patriotic race on which the sun shines; their patriotism is a passion and an instinct, and, from being restricted to their village or their district, often looks quite as like a vice as a virtue. This class is altogether so unlike any portion of the population of Western Europe, that we should be more likely to mislead than to enlighten our readers by attempting to describe it. The peasants are themselves inclined to distrust the population of the towns, and look on Bavarians, Fanariotes, and government officers, as a tribe of enemies embodying different degrees of rapacity under various names. They have as yet derived little benefit from the government of King Otho, for their taxes are greater now than they were under the Turks, and they very sagaciously attribute the existence of order in Greece to the alliance of the kings of the Franks, not to the military prowess of the Bavarians.

There is a third class of men in Greece who hold in some degree the position of an aristocracy. This class is composed of all those individuals who from education are entitled to hold government appointments; and at the head of this class figure the Fanariotes or Greek families who were in the habit of serving under the Turkish government. Many of the Fanariotes move about seeking their fortunes, from Greece to Turkey, Wallachia, and Moldavia, and vice versa. One brother will be found holding an office in the suite of the Prince of Moldavia, and another in the court of King Otho. This class is more attached to foreign influence than to Greek independence, and is almost as generally unpopular in the country as the Bavarians; and perhaps not without reason, as it supplies the court with abler and more active instruments than could be found among the dull Germans.

We must now notice the great peculiarity of the national constitution of the Greeks as a distinct people. There is indeed a singular difference in the organization of the European nations, which does not always meet with due attention from historians. The various governments of Europe are divided into absolute and constitutional; but it is seldom considered necessary to explain whether the people are ruled by officers appointed by the central authority of the state, or by magistrates elected by local assemblies of the people. Yet, as the character of a nation is more important in history than the form of its government, it is as much the duty of the historian to examine the institutions of the people, as it is the business of the politician to be acquainted with the action of the government. To illustrate this, we shall describe in general terms the political constitution of the Greeks, and leave our readers to compare it with the share enjoyed by the French, and some other of the constitutional nations, in their own local government. After all the boasted liberty and equality of the subjects of the Citizen King, we own that we consider that the Greeks possess national institutions resting on a surer and more solid basis.

All Greece is, and always has been, divided into communities enjoying the right of choosing their own magistrates, and these magistrates decide a number of police and administrative questions not affecting crimes and rights of property. The most populous town, and the smallest hamlet, equally exercise this privilege, and it is to its existence that the Greeks owe the power of resistance they were enabled to exert against their Roman and Turkish masters. We shall not enter into the history of this institution, under the Turks, at present; as it is sufficient for our purpose to give our readers a correct idea of the existing state of things. A local elective magistracy is formed, which prevents the central government from goading the people to insurrection by the insolence of office which the inferior agents of an ill-organized administration constantly display. Fortunately for the tranquillity of the country, the local administration works its way onward through the daily difficulties which present themselves, independent of king, ministers, councillors of state, or royal governors.

In order to make our description as exact as possible, without presenting a vague statistical view of the whole kingdom, for the accuracy of which we would not pretend to answer, we confine our observations to the province of Attica, concerning which we have been able to obtain official information from all the communes.

There is, of course, a royal governor in Attica, who resides at Athens; he is named on the responsibility of the minister of the interior, with whom he is in daily correspondence, and is the organ of communication between the royal government and the popular magistracy. Of course, in the present state of things, the officer is appointed by King Otho himself, who has made it a point of statesmanship to keep a person in the place quite as much disposed to serve as a spy on all the ministers, as inclined to execute with zeal the orders of his immediate superior.

The population of Attica is divided into seven communes or demarchies.18

It will be enough for our purpose to describe the local constitution of the city of Athens, and then point out the slight variations which circumstances render necessary in the secluded agricultural communes of the province.

The magistrates of Athens consist of a demarch (provost), six paredhroi (bailies), and a town council composed of eighteen members. The town-council is selected by all the citizens, who vote by signed lists, containing the names of thirty-six individuals. The eighteen who have a majority of votes become members of the town-council, and the remaining eighteen who have the greatest number form a list of supplementary members to supply vacancies, and prevent any election being necessary except at the stated periods provided by law. The election of the demarch and paredhroi is a more complicated affair. The eighteen members chosen to form the town-council, and eighteen citizens who are the highest tax-payers in the community, then meet together under the presidency of the royal governor of the province. This meeting first proceeds to elect two of its number to open the ballot-box, and assist and control the conduct of the royal governor, as vice-presidents of the assembly. The election proceeds, the persons present voting by ballot. The names of candidates for the office of demarch must be returned, from which the king selects one, and six paredhroi chosen, who must all have an absolute majority of votes. The indirect election of the demarch is extremely unpopular, as it has no effect except to enable the king to exclude two popular but uncourtly citizens from every municipal office.

The plan of election in the country districts is precisely similar, but the town-council is less numerous, and each village has its own resident paredhros. The election of the demarch and of the paredhroi is conducted as at Athens, and the royal governor of the province is compelled to visit each commune in turn, in order to preside at the election. The whole system rests on a popular basis. Every citizen possessing property, or enrolled in the list of citizens from paying taxes, enjoys a vote in the election of the magistrates of his demos. The royal authority only concurs in so far as is required to preserve order, and give an official certificate of the legality of the proceedings.

We come now to another popular institution, which gives a great degree of political strength to the municipal organization of Greece, and protects its liberties in a manner unknown in most other countries. Each province possesses a provincial council, the members of which are elected by the citizens of the different demoi into which the province is divided—a demos containing 2000 inhabitants, sends one representative; a demos with 10,000 but exceeding 2000, sends two representatives; and a demos having more than 10,000 inhabitants, sends three. Here, however, the electors are required to pay fifty drachmas of direct taxes to the general government in order to be entitled to vote.19

It will be seen, on referring to the population of the Attic demoi, that the provincial council of Attica consists of twelve members, and these members are elected for six years. The restriction on the electors is not unpopular in Greece, as it is connected with an extended suffrage in the municipal elections. Upwards of 500 citizens voted in Athens at the last elections of provincial councillors. The provincial councils meet every year in the months of February or March, as that is the season when the landed proprietors in the country can most conveniently absent themselves from their farms. The council chooses its own president and secretary, but the royal governor of the province has the right to attend its meeting. The budget of each demos must be presented to the council and approved by it, and it has the power of rejecting any item of expenditure; but it can only recommend, not enforce, any additional expense. It is likewise the business of the provincial council to examine the grounds on which any demos solicits the power of imposing local taxes: it proposes also general improvements for the whole province, and has the power of assessing the taxes necessary for carrying them into effect. Roads, barracks for gendarmes, prisons, hospitals, and schools, are objects of its attention. Its acts must all be presented to the minister of the interior at the conclusion of the session, and they acquire validity only from the time the minister communicates the royal assent to the proceedings.

This system of popular government, in all matters directly connected with the daily business of the citizens, is a wise arrangement, and it has proved a powerful engine for the preservation of order amidst a population accustomed to anarchy, revolution, and despotism; and it has also formed a firm barrier against the tyrannical aspirations of the Bavarians. Indeed, had King Otho's government not been prevented, by this municipal system, from coming into daily contact with the people, we are persuaded that it would long ago have thrown Greece into convulsions, and caused the massacre of every Bavarian in the country.

From the account we have given of the royal central government on the one hand, and of the local magistracy on the other, it will be evident to our readers that there are two powers at work in Greece, which, unless they are united in the pursuit of some common objects, must at last engage in a contest for the mastery.

We shall now notice the newspaper allegation, that the Greek court is composed entirely of Bavarians. This was once the case, but it ceased to be strictly true from the moment Armansperg introduced the system of bribing the Greeks to join the Bavarian party; and at present the government is supported almost entirely by Greek deserters from the national cause. There is now no Bavarian in the ministry, and there are Greeks in the cabinet. Many of the Greeks who affect with foreigners to be loud in their complaints against the Bavarians, are, in the administration, the most strenuous supporters of King Otho's system, and, like Maurocordatos, the declared opponents of a national assembly and of a representative form of government. They declare to the king that it is necessary to retain some Bavarians in Greece, and they really wish it done in order to exclude their Greek rivals from office. A revolution, followed by a foreign government, and a lavish expenditure, has demoralized sterner stuff than Greek politicians are made of, so that it is more to be regretted than wondered at, when it appears that the Greek court has an unusually large supply of venal political adventurers always ready to enter its service.

This band consists of the Fanariotes, who were trained to official aptitude and immorality under the Turks—of the politicians of the revolution who deserted the cause of their country for the service of the protecting powers at the last national assembly—and of a large class of educated men not bred to commerce, who have resorted to Greece to make their fortunes, and are now ready to accept places under any government. The court, in its ignorance of Greece, has often purchased the services of these men at their own valuation; and from this cause originates the crowd of incapable councillors of state, useless ambassadors and consuls, ignorant ministerial councillors and royal governors, and dishonest commissaries, who assemble round King Otho in his palace. But time is rolling on—ten years have elapsed since King Otho first stepped on the Hellenic soil—the heroes of the war are sinking into the grave—Miaulis, the best of the brave—Zaimi, the sagacious timid Moreote noble—Kolocotroni, the sturdy strewd old klephtic chieftain;—these three representatives and leaders of numerous classes of their countrymen, now sleep in an honoured grave, and their followers no longer form a majority in the land. A new race has arisen, a race equal in education to the Maurocordatos, Rizos, Souizos, Karadjas, Tricoupis, and Kolettis, and possessing the immense advantage over these men of occupying a social position of greater independence. The fiery vehemence of youth placed most of these new men in the opposition when they entered on life. A political career being closed, they were, fortunately for their country, obliged to devote all their attention to the cultivation of their estates, and content themselves with improving their vineyards and olive plantations instead of governing their country. Years have now brought an increase of wealth, habits of moderation, steadiness of purpose, and feelings of independence.