H. R. Fox Bourne

“ The magazines, instead of being the receptacles of filth and crime, will be full of the richest foreign and domestic productions; and all will be energy and activity, because the reward will be in proportion to the labour. Your river will be filled with ships, and the monopolist degraded and shamed. You will bless the day in which Omnipotence permitted to be rent asunder the veil of obscurity, under which the despotism of Spain, the abominable tyranny of the Inquisition, and the want of liberty of the press, so long hid the truth from your sight. ”

“ The education which my countrymen, in common with myself, have received, leads to an attachment to the cause of Greece amounting to enthusiasm, and this feeling cannot but be increased by viewing the monuments of her ancient grandeur. I am ready to do my utmost to promote the interests of your country, but I am by no means willing to allow myself to be made the puppet of intriguers. I shall put an end to intrigue in the navy or I shall quit it, and I trust your excellency will excuse me if I adopt the same resolutions respecting the army, if you yourself cannot put it down. ”

“ Lord Cochrane stood out to sea so that he might not be discovered, and spent the day in putting his fleet in order, preparing an explosion-vessel, and arranging for the work of the morrow. "Brave officers and seamen," he said, in an address to his followers, "one decisive blow, and Greece is free. The port of Alexandria, the centre of all the evil that has befallen you, now contains within its narrow bounds numerous ships of war and a multitude of vessels laden with provisions, stores, and troops, intended to effect your total ruin. The wind is fair for us, and our enterprise unsuspected. ”

“ I had hoped that you would repose on your laurels and enjoy the evening of life in peace, but am told that you are about to launch a thunderbolt against the Grand Seignior on behalf of Greece. I wish to see Greece free; but could also wish you to rest from your labours. For a sexagenarian to command a fleet in ordinary war is an easy task, and even threescore and ten might do it; but fifty years are too many to conduct a naval war for a people whose pretensions to nautical skill you will find on a thousand occasions to give rise to jealousies against you. ”

“ I am persuaded, sir, that the House will easily perceive, and every honourable man, I am sure, participate in my feelings, that the fine, the imprisonment, the pillory—even that pillory to which I am condemned—are nothing, that they weigh not as a feather, when put in the balance against my desire to show that I have been unjustly condemned. Therefore, sir, I trust that the House will give a fair and impartial hearing to what I have to say respecting the conduct of my enemies, to expose which conduct is a duty which I owe to my constituents, and to my country, not less than to myself. ”

“ I have made a diversion here this day in favour of your excellency, which, by all the rules of military tactics, must increase the relative strength of your army and facilitate its march. My time and attention must now be devoted to naval matters, and unless you advance this evening, I shall have deeply and bitterly to regret, for the sake of Greece, that I ever put faith in anything being accomplished by individuals to whom so many difficulties, which my experience has taught me to be imaginary, present themselves. ”

“ Hostilities having proceeded so far, assuredly it is more expedient to reduce a restless nation to a third- or fourth-rate power, than be ourselves reduced. Let not my motive be mistaken. I have no wish to command a fleet of 100-gun ships, or to attack first-rate fortresses by incased batteries or steam gunboats. That which I desire is, first, secretly to demonstrate to competent persons the efficiency of my plans, and then to obtain authority, during eight or ten days of fine weather, to put them in execution. The means I contemplate are simple, cheap, and safe. ”

“ Can your excellency entertain a doubt, that open accusation, prompt trial, unsuspected justice, and speedy punishment, if merited, are essential to the good government of a naval service? Nay, is it possible that your excellency should not know that the system of government in the naval service of Portugal is the most wretched in the world, and consequently the last that ought to have been adopted for the naval service of Brazil? ”

“ The new President—the President whom Lord Cochrane had nominated as the likeliest man to beat down the factions and override the jealousies that had hitherto wrought such grievous mischief to Greece—began by acting up to the anticipations which had induced his selection. Schooled in Italy and Russia, he practised both tortuous diplomacy and straightforward tyranny in attempting to turn divided Greece into a united nation, in which a hundred rival claimants for power should be made humble instruments of the authority of their one master. ”

“ Every child who could hold a weapon had one placed in his hand. There was bitter leave-taking, and desperate words of encouragement passed from one to another, as the patriots were marshalled in the order of their departure;—three thousand fighting men to open a passage and four thousand women and children to follow;—the whole being divided into three separate parties. At length all was ready, and the first party silently passed out of the town and advanced to the bridges. To their amazement, they no sooner appeared than they were met by volley after volley of Turkish fire. ”

“ The unworthy disposition of most of the men in power had never been more plainly shown, nor threatened more imminent danger to the independence of Greece, than at the time of Lord Cochrane's arrival. With a few notable exceptions, of whom Miaoulis was perhaps the chief, the Greek leaders had forgotten all their national duty in personal ambition and jealousy. If they united in parties, it was only because each one hoped that, as soon as his own party was triumphant, he himself would be able to obtain the mastery over all his associates. ”

“ If Lord Cochrane's bearing at it was factious, it must be remembered how greatly he had suffered and how earnestly he desired to save the people at large from the sufferings entailed upon them by the Government which he and they had learnt to regard with a common dislike. By exposing what appeared to him and many others to be the hypocrisy of seeming philanthropists, and showing what he deemed the only real cause and the only real remedy of the national distress, he only acted as a brave and honest man, and his work was appreciated by the masses in whose interest it was done. ”

“ The Hellas even is idle for want of supplies. Each day, each event, increases my conviction that, without strong and special efforts, without a prompt and disinterested co-operation of all its citizens, Greece must of necessity be overcome. Isolated as I am, I am useless to them. Supported by their patriotism and zeal, I could fight for their independence. The islands of the Archipelago are willing to aid our efforts, but they claim from me in return a guarantee for the safety of their goods and for the regular administration of their imposts. ”

“ The members of this House are the maggots of the Constitution. They are the locusts that devour it and cause all the evils that are complained of. There is nothing wicked which does not emanate from this House. In it originate all knavery, perjury, and fraud. You well know all this. You also know that the means by which the great majority of the House is returned is one great cause of the corruption of the whole people. It has been said, 'Let the people reform themselves;' but if sums of money are offered for seats within these walls, there will always be found men ready to receive them. ”

“ Two hundred and forty years before, almost to a day, Sir Francis Drake—whom, of all English seamen, Lord Cochrane most resembled in chivalrous daring and in chivalrous hatred of oppression—had secretly led his little Golden Hind into the harbour of Callao, and there despoiled a Spanish fleet of seventeen vessels; for which and for his other brave achievements he won the nickname of El Dracone. Drake the Dragon and Cochrane the Devil were kinsmen in noble hatred, and noble punishment, of Spanish wrong-doing. ”

“ The want of money, and, still more, the want of patriotism, courage, and even common honesty on the part of nearly all the leaders with whom he was to co-operate, and the officers and crews whom he was to command, had caused his ten months' active service in Greece to comprise little more than a series of bold projects, and projects which, if he had been aided by brave men, would have been as easy as they were bold, in which he received none of the support that was necessary, and which accordingly all his energy and genius could not make successful. ”

“ Europe takes a lively interest in your destiny; your fellow-countrymen are hastening to aid you. But all depends on the energy which you yourselves display: the support which we offer you, to be efficacious, requires on your part redoubled zeal and patriotism in the actual and decisive moment. Brave Albanians! your happy future, the security of your families, and the honour of your religion, are in your hands; your bold and steady co-operation will ensure your own salvation and our success! ”

“ After sunset four bridges of planks were secretly laid over the outer ditch of Missolonghi, and the inhabitants were ordered to prepare to leave in two hours. Many—about two thousand—lost heart at last; some betaking themselves to the powder stores, there, when all hope was over, to end their lives by easier death than the enemy might allow them; others, crouching in corners of their homesteads, deeming it better to be murdered there than in the open country. The rest obeyed the orders of the generals. All the women dressed themselves as men, with swords or daggers at their waists. ”

“ I consider that the fate of Greece depends, in a great measure, on pecuniary aid from the rest of Europe, and such aid on the probability of ultimate success; but assuredly it will not be afforded if Greece proves unable or unwilling to exert herself against the handful of sickly and enfeebled Turks who continue to besiege the Acropolis of Athens. ”

“ Pitt himself confessed that no honest man could hold the situation of minister for any length of time. There can be no honest minister until measures have been taken to purge and purify the House. If this be not done, it is in vain to hope for a renewal of successful enterprise in this country: the sun of the country is set for ever. It may indeed exist as a petty military German despotism, with horsemen parading up and down, with large whiskers, with sabres ringing by their horses' sides, with fantastically-shaped caps of fantastical colours on their heads ”

“ Lord Cochrane now wrote, "enables you to judge between those who offer advice to promote personal objects and those who disinterestedly desire the welfare of mankind. Egypt may become great by the attention of her rulers to her internal concerns, but not by war and foreign conquest, and assuredly not by the conquest of that people with whom your Highness is now engaged in hostilities, not only on account of the impossibility of reducing them to subjection but because the whole of Europe is directly or indirectly engaged in their support. ”

“ Was it ever expected by any government employing foreign seamen in a war in which they can have no personal rights at stake, that those seamen will incur the risk of attacking a superior, or even an equal, force, without prospect of other reward than their ordinary pay? Is it not notorious that even in England it is found essential, or at least highly advantageous, to reward the officers and seamen, though fighting their own battles, not only with the full value of captured vessels of war, but even with additional premiums ”

“ More than six crews have passed under my review on board the Hellas in the course of as many months, exclusive of those in other vessels, and, notwithstanding all that has been written to praise the courage of the Greek seamen, they are collectively the greatest cowards I have ever met with. No service of any difficulty or danger can be undertaken with such men without the greatest risk of being compromised by the confusion they create, and the impossibility of causing orders to be obeyed. ”

“ You must see, sir, that, in this my advice to the first officer arriving in command of a vessel, I can have no interest any further than inasmuch as I wish well to the Greek cause, and therefore do not wish to see a force that can be of great service rendered ineffective by falling into the hands of people totally incapable and unwilling to adopt a single right measure. ”

“ Nine-tenths of our western colonies are still taxed on every article of food, and on all existing property, animate and inanimate; a state of things alike adverse to production and trade. Is it reasonable to imagine, if the interests of colonists are not considered jointly with those of the parent State, that they can continue to administer to our wants, comforts, and luxuries—above all, to our commercial nursery for seamen, the source of our national greatness? ”

“ Oppressed by the Ottomans on account of their race and their religion, the oppression was none the less in that it induced many of them to cast off the last shreds of freedom and deck themselves in the coarser, but, to slavish minds, the pleasanter bondage of trickery and meanness. During the eighteenth century, many Greeks rose to eminence in the Turkish service, and proved harder task-masters to their brethren than the Turks themselves generally were. ”

“ Heartily rejoicing at the benefit conferred on Greece by the battle of Navarino, Lord Cochrane could not but be troubled to think that the overthrow of the Turkish and Egyptian fleet, which he had laboured so zealously to effect, and which, had he received any adequate support from the Government or the people, would have been a work as easy for him as the enterprises in which he had been so notably successful in former times and other countries, had to be done by the officers and ships of foreign nations instead of by him and the native fleet of which, by name, he was commander-in-chief. ”