The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 311 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 311 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861.
was in no such hurry to acknowledge the Greeks, the Belgians, and the Spanish-Americans as she has been to acknowledge the Secessionists.  Years elapsed after the beginning of the struggle in Greece before the English Government professed to regard the parties to that memorable conflict even with indifference.  The British historian of the Greek Revolution, writing of the year 1821, says,—­“Among the European Governments, England was probably, next to Austria, the one most hostile to Greece at that period, when her foreign policy was guided by a spirit akin to that of Metternich; the hired organs of Ministry were loud in defence of Islam, and gall dropped from their pens on the Christian cause.”  And when, some years later, England did profess neutrality between the “parties” to the war, it was less to prevent the Greeks from falling into the hands of the Turks than to prevent the Turks from falling into the hands of the Russians.  Another object she had in view was the suppression of that horrible piracy which then raged in the Hellenic seas.  She was then as anxious to suppress piracy because it was injurious to her commerce, as, apparently, she is now anxious to promote it because its existence would be injurious to our commerce.  The famous Treaty of London, made in 1827, the parties to which were Russia, France, and England, was justified on the ground of “the necessity of putting an end to the sanguinary contest which, by delivering up the Greek provinces and the isles of the Archipelago to the disorders of anarchy, produces daily fresh impediments to the commerce of the European states, and gives occasion to piracies which not only expose the subjects of the contracting powers to considerable losses, but render necessary burdensome measures of suppression and protection.”  In the autumn of the same year, an Order in Council decreed that “the British ships in the Mediterranean should seize every vessel they saw under the Greek flag, or armed and fitted out at a Greek port, except such as were under the immediate orders of the Greek Government.”  The object of this strong measure was the suppression of piracy.  Thus England had to interfere to put down the Greek pirates; and if she means to insist upon there being any resemblance between the case of the Greeks and that of the Secessionists, (President Lincoln to appear as the Grand Turk, or Sultan Mahmoud II., the destroyer of the Janizaries,) we should not object, so far as relates to the finale of the piece, which is very likely, through her most injudicious action, to produce a large crop of Selims and Abdallahs, by whom any amount of sea-roving will be done, but as much at Britain’s expense as at ours.

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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.