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have been made only where the love of knowledge was an instinct of the people—and that at the present time Greece can compare favorably in this respect with any country in the world.* The growth of the higher schools and of the University has not been less remarkable. Within five-and-twenty years the number of the "Hellenic" schools has been nearly doubled; that of the Gymnasia has been nearly trebled; and the total numbers of pupils have grown in corresponding ratio. In 1841 the University of Athens, then recently founded, had 292 students; in 1872 it had 1,244. A few years ago it was estimated that about 81,000 persons-that is about one-eighteenth of the entire population was under instruction in Greece, either at public or at private establishments. The sum spent by Greece on public instruction is rather more than 5 per cent. of its total expenditure a larger proportion than is devoted to the same purpose by France, Italy, Austria, or Germany. When Mr. Tuckerman claims for Greece that "she stands first in the rank of nations-not excepting the United States-as a self-educated people," the claim, rightly understood, is just. It means, first, that nowh re else does the State spend so large a fraction of its disposable revenue on public education; secondly, that nowhere else is there such a spontaneous public desire to profit by the educational advantages which the State affords.

Closely connected with the progress of the higher education in Greece is a phenomenon which every visitor observes, which almost every writer on Greece discusses, and which has hitherto remained an unsolved problem of modern Greek society. This is the disproportionately large number of men who, having received a university education, become lawyers, physicians, journalists, or politicians. M. Mansolas, after observing that the "dominant calling" in Greece is that of the agriculturist, assigns the second place to "the class of men who exercise the liberal professions, of whom the number is excessive relatively to the rest of the population." Mr. Sergeant quotes on this subject part of a Report drawn up in 1872 by Mr. Watson, one of our Secretaries of Legation at Athens. "While there is felt in Greece," Mr. Watson says, a painful dearth of men whose education has fitted them to supply some of the multifarious material wants of the country-such, for instance, as surveying, farming, road-making, and bridge-building—there is, on the other hand, a plethora of lawyers, writers, and clerks, who, in the absence of regular occupation, become agitators and coffee-house politicians." As lately as last June the Correspondent of the "Times at Athens wrote as follows:-"Public life is here the monopoly of the class exercising the so-called liberal professions of advocates and university men, whose name is legion, an upper sort of proletariate, divided into two everlastingly antagonistic factions of placemen and place-hunters." It is

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*In 1835 there were about 70 primary schools, with less than 7.000 scholars; in 1845, about 450 schools, with 35,000 scholars; in 1874, about 1,130 schools, with 70,000 scholars.

easy to assign one set of causes for this state of things. Where a school and university education is offered free of charge to a people of keen intellectual appetite, it is natural that an unusually large proportion of persons should go through the university course; and where, as in Greece, agriculture is under a system which gives little scope to the higher sort of intelligence, while there is neither public nor private capital enough to provide employment for many architects or civil engineers, it is natural that an unduly large proportion of university graduates should turn to one of the liberal professions, or to some calling in which their literary training can be made available. Mr. Tuckerman has described vividly the process by which the "coffee-house politician" is developed. A young man, of somewhat better birth than the agricultural labourer or the common sailor, finds himself at eighteen a burden on a household which is hardly maintained by the industry of his father. If he followed in his father's steps, his lot would be to till the soil for what, when rent and taxes have been paid, is little more than a bare livelihood, or perhaps to subsist on the salary of a small public office. But the boy has been at a school of the higher grade, and, with a natural taste for learning, has conceived the ambition to make something better of his life than this. What, then, is he to do? He would be glad to get a clerkship in one of the commercial houses of Athens, Patras, or Syra; but there are hundreds of applicants whose chances are better than his. Even if he could afford to try his fortune in a foreign country, the risk would be, in his case, too great. Athens, the busy centre of so many activities, is his one hope. Surely there he will find something to do. He makes his way to Athens, attends the University, and becomes interested in his studies. His years of university life are made tolerably happy by the companionship of fellow-students whose situation resembles his own. Literary and political discussion, enjoyed over the evening coffee and cigarette, comes to be his chief delight. At last he takes his degree. He must choose a profession. The Bar is already overcrowded. A perpetual series of epidemics would be required to provide moderate occupation for half of the physicians. has not patience to undertake the duties of a schoolmaster among the Greeks of Turkey. It remains that he should be a politician. He writes for the newspapers, and awaits the moment when his party shall hold its next distribution of loaves and fishes. He receives, perhaps, a small post, or some other reward. Thenceforth he is devoted to his new career. Through years of plenty and years of leanness, he is content to wait on the revolutions of the political wheel. If it is suggested to him that this is an unsatisfactory life, his answer is simple: Can you show me a better?

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Such cases may be common, and may help to explain why, in addition to the overstocked liberal professions, there should be a large number of party writers and place-seekers. But the continued over-supply in all these careers would still remain inexplicable if we confined our view to the Kingdom of Greece. The clue is to be found in the relations ex

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isting between free Greece and that which is still emphatically slaved" Greece-n dovλn Ellas. The Kingdom of Greece offers a university education free of charge not only to its own subjects but also to the Greek subjects of the Porte. As to the measure in which the ranks of University men at Athens have been swelled by Greek subjects of Turkey, an interesting piece of evidence will be found in Mr. H. M. Baird's "Modern Greece." Mr. Baird attended classes at the University of Athens, and became intimately acquainted with its life and working. "It is a circumstance well worth the noticing," he writes, "that rather more than one-half of the matriculated students are from districts under the rule of the Sultan. Thus Athens is a focus of intellectual life not only for the Kingdom of Greece but for the Greeks of Turkey: and the already redundant supply of lettered men is further increased by an influx from abroad. Hence the social equilibrium of Greece is deranged in a manner to which no other country presents a parallel. In other countries the law of supply and demand roughly suffices to maintain a natural balance between the number of those who engage in productive industries and the number of those who embrace the liberal professions or seek office from the State. In Greece this is not so. The population of Greece is a million and a half. The number of Greeks in Turkey is about five millions. Among these five millions there are, of course, many who desire a political or official life. They cannot have this under conditions which they can accept in Turkey. They are therefore driven to seek it in Greece. Educated men, or men desirous of education, throng into the kingdom of Greece from Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, Crete. But unfortunately there is no reciprocity. The industrial populations of those provinces are not at the disposition of Greece. Thus the balance of occupation is destroyed. "Five competitors at least," says M. Moraitinis, dispute each public office." He anticipates an objection. "This invasion from without-this plethora of applicants, so troublesome in its effects-could not free Greece stop it ?" "No," he answers, "the evil is unavoidable. Greece has the duty of receiving all her children who come to her from without. To repel them would be a treason against kinship; it would be to deny the past and to blight the future it would be, also, to forego the precious aid of devoted patriotism and of valuable ability."

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Mr. Watson, in the Report already noticed, points out, indeed, that the plethora of academically-trained men is not an unmixed evil. "Undoubtedly," he says, "it confers considerable advantages on the Levant in general. Many provinces of the Ottoman Empire are indebted to the seats of learning in Athens for a supply of intelligent doctors, divines, lawyers, chemists, clerks." "The role of Greece in the contemporary East," M. Lenormant writes, "closely resembles its role in antiquity. The Hellenic race represents the motive power in the Ottoman Empire, as, twenty-two centuries ago, it represented it in Persian Asia." It may fairly be urged, as Mr. Sergeant well urges, that the very existence of

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this so-called "over-education" is a proof of the fitness of Greece to perform the part of a civilising power in the East. It may also be said that the general influence of high education widely diffused has done much to leaven Greek life with the spirit of order, industry and sustained effort. Mr. Sergeant's remarks on this point are illustrated by the testimony of foreign observers to the decorous behaviour of the Athenian population on occasions which in most other capitals would scarcely fail to evoke some popular turbulence, or even to let loose the passions of a mob. In the crisis of the revolution under the former reign, which resulted in King Otho signing the constitutional decree, the whole population of Athens was in the streets. "For an entire day the open space in front of the palace was filled with an excited and determined people and a revolted soldiery. All police surveillance was suspended; men of the lowest class paraded the streets with loaded arms, and the largest opportunity for license and lawlessness was afforded: yet not a gun was fired, nor a stone raised, nor was even a flower plucked from the public gardens." The Greek capital, in this instance, only reflected the normal character of the Greek people; there is plenty of popular enthusiasm ; but there is no rowdyism.

It seems probable that the large development of manufacturing industry and commerce in Greece during the last few years will tend gradually to diminish the pressure of candidates for the learned or literary callings, by showing men where they may find a sphere of honourable exertion without permanently leaving the country. In fact the intelligent enterprise and power of combination which have lately been exhibited in this field go far to prove that it has already become attractive to men of education. Thus new banks have been established; a new steam navigation company for the Mediterranean and the Black Sea has been formed, under the Greek flag, by Greek capitalists; and the rights of the Franco-Italian company, which since 1865 had worked the mines of Laurium, have been purchased by a new company composed chiefly of Greeks. Projects have been entertained for lines of railway from Athens to Patras, and from Patras to Pyrgos on the north-west coast of Morea. A correspondent quoted by Mr. Tuckerman confirms the view indicated above. "These private undertakings," he writes, "including mining and railway operations, have already begun to produce most satisfactory results, not merely as regards the social, but also as regards the political condition of the country. It is thus that we have lately witnessed quite an unprecedented phenomenon. A large number of clerks and other employés of the Civil Service are sending in their resignations, and are accepting posts in these new establishments at rates of remuneration even lower than the Government salaries, preferring the stability and hope of advancement offered them by private enterprise to the torturing and ruinous uncertainty with which they held offices dependent on the arbitrary will of each successive minister. In this new movement I see the solution of one of the great difficulties this country has been labouring under-the fight for public offices."

It is an opinion which is often heard in Greece, both from natives and from foreign residents, that permanence in the Civil Service appointments would do much to steady the politics of the country; others, again, say that this is made virtually impossible by universal suffrage, since the majority will always prefer the chances afforded by a frequent redistribution of many smali prizes. In England there are about fiftytwo electors to every thousand inhabitants; in France, with universal suffrage, there are 267; in Greece no fewer than 311. It is noteworthy that M. Moraitinis-an unquestionably intelligent friend of progress in Greece-appears to regard universal suffrage as being, for Greece, an institution of doubtful expediency, and even goes so far as to suggest that the constitution "might and should be modified" in the direction of withdrawing the suffrage from those "who, having nothing to preserve, are ready to sell their conscience" (p. 569). But we are concerned with Greece and its constitution as they now are. On the main point there is little difference of opinion. The great need of all for Greece, if Greece is to go on prospering, is that politics should cease to be a game played between the holders and seekers of office, and that all local or personal interests whatsoever should be uniformly and steadily subordinated to the public interests of the country. Before this can be thoroughly secured two things must come to pass. First, adequate outlets must be found for the energies of the educated class who have hitherto been driven into making politics a livelihood: this, as we have seen, has in a certain measure been accomplished already, and there seems reason to hope that the growing material prosperity of Greece will by degrees provide a complete solution. Secondly, the Greek people must bring a sound and vigorous public opinion to bear on public affairsnot by fits and starts, but steadily. It has been said, with too much truth, that Greece has been a nation of opinions without a public opinion. The free growth and effective expression of public opinion has been checked by too much centralisation,-by the tendency of many administrations to regard a close bureaucracy as the only shelter for authority. There can be no vitality of public opinion without diffusion of power; but hitherto the average Greek voter in the prov-` inces has been controlled by no real sense of personal responsibility to the country. Public meetings for the discussion of proposed measures have been rare out of Athens. Along with excessive centralisation another cause has been at work-the tendency of the Greek character to set the interests of a district or a town above the general interests of the nation. This "particularism "-scarcely less marked to-day than in the Greek commonwealths of old-may be traced, now as formerly, in some measure to the physical configuration of the country, and to the want, still seriously felt, of easy communication. The old Greeks had common national characteristics, but never formed a nation; the Greeks of to-day are a nation, with a strong national sentiment, but without a sufficiently energetic unity of national purpose. Nothing but such unity of purpose can enforce those reforms which the country

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