NARRATIVE OF THE AFFAIRS OF GREECE.

PART II.

L'Angleterre et la France empressées de trouver un moyen de terminer à la satisfaction de L'Empereur les troubles de la Grèce -." Pozzo DI BORGO.

COUNT Capodistrias had wholly mistaken the character of the people he went to govern. In violation of the principle of the constitution, he had appointed judges removeable at pleasure; and, whilst he defended this transgression of the constitution, by saying that there was no Greek sufficiently conversant with the practice of European law to emancipate himself from its chicanery, and it was true that there was no one capable of judging according to any other principles than those of common sense and custom, the laws he produced were so complicated, so perversive of every principle of justice and rectitude, that we cannot characterize them in any other language than that used by an eminent French jurisconsulte, at that time at Nauplia, who being asked to inspect them, returned them labelled with this remark:-" Digne d'un Juris

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consulte Venitien du 15me Siècle."

Thus, Capodistrias, whilst by his own confession he introduced laws which none of the judges of his selection were able to comprehend, and which were useless, because all the relations between man and man in Greece were of the simplest nature, rendered the property of every individual in Greece dependent upon his dictum. The following specimen of one of his enactments will show their character:-" Any person owing a debt to government, no matter how small its amount, stood responsible to government with his whole property." And it was further enacted, that confiscation was perfectly legitimate for the smallest debt; for, if a debtor to the government could not satisfy the claim against him at any moment when the government chose to demand it, his whole property might be put up to public auction at a certain amount. If the first day no bidder offered himself, it was exposed the second day, the price being reduced 5 per cent., and it went on decreasing 5 per cent. each day until a bidder offered. An extraordinary exhibition of justice was this, and this was merely to terrify any

government debtor from rendering himself obnoxious to the President.

But the President

had another way of terrifying his enemies by means of judicial chicane. Any man that rendered himself obnoxious to the government might be cited before the courts by any individual of the Capodistrian faction, and his property was held in abeyance by the most vexatious delays. Sentences were never pronounced, but lawsuits were suspended over the head of almost every proprietor who was even suspected of having an Anti-Capodistrian bias. Independently of the spirit of litigation introduced by Capodistrias, according to the system he now adopted, every man's life and fortune were held by his will alone, and he pushed matters as far as he dared.

The next innovation of Capodistrias was directed against the freedom of the press. During the first two years no enactment had taken place on this subject, because the President did not choose to remind the Greeks that the press was free. They, on their side, refrained from publishing, out of regard to the High Protecting Powers. But the long-suffer

ing of the people gradually gave way to complaint. At length a Cretan, of the name of Antoniades, published a newspaper criticising the administration of the President. The document that was so obnoxious to Capodistrias was simply a letter from the distinguished patriot and litterateur, Coraï. Antoniades was imprisoned and his press was seized. But, on his trial, several months afterwards, he was acquitted. This trial was brought on when Capodistrias feared that he had pushed matters too far, but it proved that he had acted unconstitutionally in the proceeding, although that was not declared.

Shortly afterwards, Polizoïdes, a Constitutionalist, wished to set on foot a journal, merely to establish the fact that the press was free, and to show that the Greeks, as a nation, were not contented with Capodistrias. The intention of the party was not to attack him personally, and also to avoid every subject or observation that could give grounds for complaint or animadversion. Their object was to publish an account of the Polish struggle, not indeed for the purpose of communicating those events to

the Greeks, but by the exhibition to Europe of the sympathy of Greece for Poland to disprove the insidious impressions which had been so industriously spread of predilections in the Greek people for Russia, and as an indication to the statesmen of Europe of the destinies of Greece, as well as of so many other countries, being ultimately bound up in the existence of Poland.

Capodistrias proceeded against Polizoïdes in the same manner as he had acted against Antoniades, but the former fled with his press to Hydra, and, under the sanction of the islanders, established a journal called the "Apollo."

The President now published a loi organique, regulating the freedom of the press. In this it was enacted that the press was perfectly free according to the constitution, but that every editor establishing a journal was obliged to hand into the Treasury a guarantee in money, besides finding two securities among respectable householders, that he would not transgress provisions which neutralized in every respect this pretended freedom of the press. It was first enacted that the editor must not attack either religion or morals, and, secondly, a very vague