made on behalf of Turkey. Whether to avoid trouble, or for whatever reason, in certain districts, as in the Armatoliks, in Maina, in Sphakia, a more or less wild local independence was permitted to subsist. And candor compels us to confess that the gradual inroads of Russia, with its rising power, upon the Ottoman empire, and its active interference in the Danubian principalities, suggested in idea the figure of a deliverer rising on the far horizon.
In the peculiar case of Chios, the large principles of local self-government, established under the Genoese trading company of the Giustiniani, were respected by the sultans after the conquest of the island in 1566. It became the home of comparative security and prosperity. It retained this character until the epoch of the Greek revolution, when all, or nearly all, was quenched in blood by a massacre even more sanguinary, though apparently in some respects less fiendish, than the Bulgarian massacres of the present year. By this condition of relative freedom, continued through generations, the inhabitants of the island rose to a superior level of intelligence; and it is indeed a remarkable fact, that Chios has supplied the chief part of those mercantile families, so full of intelligence, enterprise, and shrewdness, who have given in our day to Grecian commerce its very prominent and powerful position in the west, as well as in the east, of Europe. What a lesson, on the comparative results of servitude on the one hand, and even a very modest share of freedom with order on the other!
When the Morea returned, by the peace of Passarowitz in 1718, under Turkish dominion, the cessation of the children-tribute had for some time removed a powerful check upon the growth of the population, and the system came at least partially into vogue of commuting the personal services of the rayah, and exactions in kind, for money payments of fixed amount.[1] In the eighteenth century, and the nineteenth down to the time of the revolution, the population of the Morea would appear to have increased from two hundred thousand (1701)[2] to twice that number.
The consequence of this rising energy was soon exhibited in the activity of Russian influence, and in the readiness with which welcome was accorded to the rather selfish plans of Catherine II. In 1770, her agents procured a revolt in the Peloponnesos and in Crete, but with the avowed intention of bringing them under the crown of the empress.[3] The result, as might be expected, was discouraging; and in the peace of Kainardji, which did so much to extend Russian power and influence over the Christians of Turkey in general, no other care was taken of the Greeks than the insertion of a clause of amnesty, which was left to execute itself; a process which requires no exposition in detail.[4] They shared, however, in principle, and they had qualities enabling them to turn to peculiar account, the strange but very valuable privileges of the barat, under' which Ottoman subjects, residing in Ottoman territory, obtained a charter of denaturalization, and the privileges of the subjects of some friendly power, to whom their allegiance was transferred.[5] But the time soon arrived when the Greeks began to feel the moral influence of the French Revolution, of growing commerce, and of the improvements effected in their language by progressive approximations to the ancient standard. By the time of the treaty of Vienna, they had so far imbibed the spirit and sense of nationality, that it is said disappointment was felt on its being found that nothing was done for the Greek race. The influence of the mischievous combination, which daringly assumed the name of the Holy Alliance, was undisguisedly adverse to them. The Congress of Laybach, at the outset of the revolution, declared its hostility to every struggle for freedom. The Congress of Verona,[6] which followed closely upon the great massacre of Chios, was not roused by sympathy or horror to authorize any positive measure or policy against Sultan Mahmoud; and the religious sympathies of the emperor Alexander were upon the whole overborne, in the direction of Russian policy, by his horror of democracy.[7]
But the opinion and sense of communities had now a larger influence than formerly on the course of affairs, and even on the action of governments. The Greeks were advancing in education and in wealth, whilst the process of decay had visibly attacked the proud empire of the Ottomans. Courage had revived among them, fostered partially by piracy and brigandage,
