elector. The number of delegates allotted to Corfu, Cephalonia, and Zante, was ten each. Santa Maura was given six, and Ithaca, Cerigo and Paxo, two each, making forty-two in all. The vote was held in the chief town of each district. The polls were open from seven A. M. to five P. M. on two successive days. At a public meeting some days previous to the election the candidates were nominated and the election officials elected. Voting at the election was by secret ballot. The method followed was novel; a ballot box with two compartments was provided for each candidate's name, one compartment, painted white, to receive the affirmative vote, one green, to receive the negative. The count was to be made by local native officials who for the most part were elective. It appears that British opinion had failed to credit with sincerity the votes of the former delegates for union, arguing from the well-known Ionian love of office that in view of the fact that union would surely mean a reduction in the number of offices, the deputies were voting for it only while it was unattainable, and as a means of earning their constituents' support. The British officials had also firmly believed that the landed class would, if it came to a vote, prefer the sure protection of Great Britain with its conservative franchise to the doubtful protection of the weak Greek kingdom which had universal suffrage. This false impression had been aided by several petitions which had been presented, begging for incorporation as a British Crown colony. However widespread these views may have been among the British officials, and they were certainly held by the Commissioner, Sir Henry Storks, and by Gladstone,1 they proved to be unfounded. There was scarcely a dissenting voice in the vote for union. The Parliament opened on October 1, 1863. On the 3rd, it was addressed by the Commissioner, who stated that they had been convoked to inform him whether or not it was the desire of the people by whom they had been chosen that the Protectorate of Her British Majesty should cease and that the Ionian States should form henceforth a part of the Kingdom of Greece. In the same address he enumerated the conditions stipulated by the British Government, the important one being that of an obligation to make an annual payment of £10,000 to the Civil List of the Greek King. Should the vote be in favor of the union, he continued, the Queen would then invite the Powers which were parties to the treaty of 1815 to revise that treaty, in conjunction with France, which had been a party to the treaties respecting Greece, to make "such arrangements as should tend to the future welfare of the Islands and the permanent interests of Europe. On October 5 the Parliament, with 1 Kirkwall, vol. 1, pp. 233, 284. 2 Documents, post, p. 852. only three dissenting votes,1 proceeded to vote a formal decree of union with the kingdom of Greece.2 Regarding the conditions laid down by the Commissioner, the Assembly reserved to itself the right to declare its decisions, as soon as it should have been informed concerning the matters vaguely referred to by the Commissioner as "arrangements for the welfare of the States and the interests of Europe." As for the guarantee of an annual payment of £10,000 to the King's civil list, the Assembly made no answer whatever. The temper of the deputies was opposed to considering it as a compulsory measure. No action having been taken, the Commissioner, on the 13th, again called their attention to the subject, to which the Assembly answered with a request to modify the conditions.3 The Assembly was finally forbidden to discuss the matter further and on October 21 it was prorogued, never to reassemble.1 66 The arrangements for the welfare of the States and the interests of Europe" proved to be as displeasing to the islanders as was the guarantee of the civil list. The Powers had come to a secret understanding, on the demand of Great Britain, Austria and Turkey, that the cession should be accompanied by the razing of the fortifications of Corfu and the neutralization of the islands. These conditions had not been mentioned by the Commissioner and when they were published in the British press they raised a fury of protest in the Islands, but, as in the case of the civil list, they were insisted on by the Powers. The wish of the Ionian Assembly having been duly expressed on the question of union, and the British government having made the vote known to the guaranteeing Powers, the plenipotentiaries of Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia met at London to take the next step. On November 14 they signed a treaty to the effect that, the condition of the vote laid down in the Convention of August 1 having been fulfilled, the Powers signatory to the treaty of 1815 now formally accorded their assent to the renunciation of the Protectorate by Britain, and to the union of the Islands with the Hellenic kingdom. The obnoxious clauses of neutrality and the razing of 1 Kirkwall, vol. 1, p. 284. On p. 262 of vol. 2, Kirkwall says that the vote was unanimous. 2 Documents, post, p. 853. 3 There were three dissenting from this vote on the ground that all the conditions of union might be confided to the generosity of Great Britain. Possibly this accounts for the inconsistency in Kirkwall noted above. The treaty of March 29, 1864, recites in Article 5 that the Assembly on October 7/19, 1863, voted that the annual payment be made.- Kirkwall characterizes the demand as indefensible, as there was no reason to assign the King a special revenue from the Islands. It was later abandoned. 5 France, Affaires étrangères: Documents diplomatiques, 1864, p. 75. Kirkwall says that the condition was insisted on by Austria against the wish of Great Britain. the fortress were included in the treaty. On March 29, 1864, a final treaty between Great Britain, France, Russia, and Greece, again referring to the vote of the Assembly as the condition which had been stipulated and fulfilled, legalized the cession and the termination of the British Protectorate was finally proclaimed by the Lord High Commissioner on May 28, 1864. THE SCHLESWIG QUESTION, 1848— The most widely known instance of a treaty clause providing for a plebiscite concerning a question of sovereignty is that of Article 5 of the treaty signed at Prague in 1866, whereby Austria and Prussia agreed as to the disposition of the Danish duchies. However, the suggestion of a plebiscite in Northern Schleswig does not begin with the Treaty of Prague, but dates from the struggle in the duchies between the German and Danish nationalist movements of 1848. The fortunes of the two feudal duchies of Schleswig and Holstein had for many years been identified with those of the Kingdom of Denmark, although their union with the kingdom was purely a personal one under the Danish King, who had inherited the titles of Duke of Holstein and Duke of Schleswig. In spite of this ancient union, and of the fact that the two duchies had been for centuries closely allied or dynastically united with each other, they were of different racial texture. Holstein was wholly German in population and had been made a member of the Germanic Confederation in 1815. Except for the west coast and the North Sea islands, Frisian from time immemorial, Schleswig was originally Danish down to the river Eider, which was the historical frontier of Denmark. In the Middle Ages, however, it had received a large influx of settlers from Holstein, as may still be seen from the German place names along the Eider and through the south of Schleswig. During the close union of the two duchies this northward movement of German settlers continued and South Schleswig proper (bounded by the Schley-Dannevirke-Husum line to the north), eventually became solidly German in language and sympathies. This line of Schley-Husum at the end of the 18th century formed the frontier for race and language. During the 19th century, however, the German language, aided by Government pressure, by the influence of the Church, and later by a popular movement, penetrated further north, and by 1848 the linguistic frontier corresponded roughly to the line of Flensburg-Tondern.1 This was only a very rough approximation, however, for throughout central Schleswig there were regions where sometimes the one race and sometimes the other were settled in solid blocks, and, 1 Emil Elberling, "Partage du Slesvig" in Manuel historique de la question du Slesvig. Edited by Franz de Jessen, p. 139. |