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Show GREECE AND ITS GOVERNMENT. The Greek is a born democrat and republican-words not always synonymous-and the institutions of royalty have never had my hold on him. The monarchy, with its fictitious glitter and Bengal lights, has never deluded his shrewd sense of reality he has no reverence for one man above another, and he never forgets that the king is a mere convention. Here is the first and most telling incongruity-monarchy growing with no soil for its roots, a huge parasite sapling, and, what is worse, corrupting the national vitality. Again, the Greek is the most individual of men, one unlike every other-shrewd and prosperous alone, paralyzed and lost in association. The commune are individual States in which the greatest co-operation of which the race is capable is obtained, and all the progress made in Greece is in the prosperity of the commune. This is circumscribes by a general government whose centralization is a caricature of that of any else where now existing constitutional government. The commune is not free to build a bridge or repair a road or pier without the consent of the Government at Athens. That the change from Otho to George was from bad to worse is now acknowledged by everybody in Greece. The new king, in addition to the usual demoralization of princes was a weak, vain, and pleasure loving youth, profoundly selfish, and with only one strong point-his obstinate adherence to his own whims. No despotism is so disastrous as that of a weak character, and George has already shown that he knows how to take advantage of the defects of the Greek Constitution to enable him to evade all the most onerous responsibilities of his position. The first impression his personality gives to an observer not in awe of royalty is that of being nearly a simpleton, in fact, his intellectual attainments beyond languages are scarcely above those of an average American school boy of twelve. He hates study and books, submits to the superficial cramming which is necessary to his position with bad grace, but absolutely refuses to acquire a thorough knowledge of anything except horses. He is not, however, devoid of a certain cunning, which enables him to present always a good face to the diplomatic corps whom he succeeds in persuading that he is the victim of the jealousies of his people, and to play off one set of ministers against another when he has any particular object to gain. The fact that a ministry can always be made of men who have no ?? beyond the advisability of holding office, and the power the king possesses of dismissing a ministry and dissolving a chamber if it does not meet his views, make constitutional restraints a mockery. In fact, nothing prevents the king from doing what he pleases, and as he takes no interest in the country and has a dominant passion-avarice-which he gratifies at the expense of the nation in the most undignified ways, giving rise to the common saying at Athens that he is scraping up funds for his exile, it may easily be understood that he has long ago exhausted the loyal enthusiasm of his subjects. He is, in fact, cordially detested by the better part of the population, and a very slight provocation might determine his departure from the country, which is to him simply a farm from which, knowing the insecurity of his tenure, he is getting all he can while it lasts. His constitutional timidity, or what we should in plain people call cowardice is the real key to the failure of the good intentions of the western powers and the really heroic efforts of the people to secure a satisfactory solution of the recent ?? Greek crisis. The king had from the beginning determined not to fight or even to go to the frontier, and as Greece is really as to foreign matters governed by one or other of the diplomatic corp ?? the king he naturally fell into the plan of that diplomatic agent who promised so to manage things as to avert war. As Greek ambitions conflict with Austrian plans the latter, backed by Bismarck, of course, prevailed, and ?? important to Austria in her possible contest with Italy for the dominion of the Adriatic, was sacrificed by the king and ?? really because the former was afraid to lead his army across the frontier. The blue hook discloses the curious fact that the Greek Government took the lead in urging the reduction of Greek claims to the point at which they were settled, in order to avoid a war which the large majority of the nation had desired, and which all were ready to enter into if need were. To those who knew the extraordinarily timid nature of the king there was no puzzle in the ?? but as kings rarely have the truth told about them, the world at large credited him with the sincerity of his professions of warlike purpose. His habitual surroundings always foretold that there would be no war, and some gave us the reason that the king was a coward." |