I shall not detain the committee, Mr. Chairman, by any attempt to recite the events of the Greek struggle up to the present time.  Its origin may be found, doubtless, in that improved state of knowledge which, for some years, has been gradually taking place in that country.  The emancipation of the Greeks has been a subject frequently discussed in modern times.  They themselves are represented as having a vivid remembrance of the distinction of their ancestors, not unmixed with an indignant feeling that civilized and Christian Europe should not ere now have aided them in breaking their intolerable fetters.

In 1816 a society was founded in Vienna for the encouragement of Grecian literature.  It was connected with a similar institution at Athens, and another in Thessaly, called the “Gymnasium of Mount Pelion.”  The treasury and general office of the institution were established at Munich.  No political object was avowed by these institutions, probably none contemplated.  Still, however, they had their effect, no doubt, in hastening that condition of things in which the Greeks felt competent to the establishment of their independence.  Many young men have been for years annually sent to the universities in the western states of Europe for their education; and, after the general pacification of Europe, many military men, discharged from other employment, were ready to enter even into so unpromising a service as that of the revolutionary Greeks.

In 1820, war commenced between the Porte and Ali, the well-known Pacha of Albania.  Differences existed also with Persia and with Russia.  In this state of things, at the beginning of 1821, an insurrection broke out in Moldavia, under the direction of Alexander Ypsilanti, a well-educated soldier, who had been major-general in the Russian service.  From his character, and the number of those who seemed inclined to join him, he was supposed to be countenanced by the court of St. Petersburg.  This, however, was a great mistake, which the Emperor, then at Laybach, took an early opportunity to rectify.  The Turkish government was alarmed at these occurrences in the northern provinces of European Turkey, and caused search to be made of all vessels entering the Black Sea, lest arms or other military means should be sent in that manner to the insurgents.  This proved inconvenient to the commerce of Russia, and caused some unsatisfactory correspondence between the two powers.  It may be worthy of remark, as an exhibition of national character, that, agitated by these appearances of intestine commotion, the Sultan issued a proclamation, calling on all true Mussulmans to renounce the pleasures of social life, to prepare arms and horses, and to return to the manner of their ancestors, the life of the plains.  The Turk seems to have thought that he had, at last, caught something of the dangerous contagion of European civilization, and that it was necessary to reform his habits, by recurring to the original manners of military roving barbarians.