xtended suffrage in the
municipal elections. Upwards of 500 citizens voted in Athens at the last
elections of provincial councillors. The provincial councils meet every
year in the months of February or March, as that is the season when the
landed proprietors in the country can most conveniently absent themselves
from their farms. The council chooses its own president and secretary, but
the royal governor of the province has the right to attend its meeting.
The budget of each demos must be presented to the council and approved by
it, and it has the power of rejecting any item of expenditure; but it can
only recommend, not enforce, any additional expense. It is likewise the
business of the provincial council to examine the grounds on which any
demos solicits the power of imposing local taxes: it proposes also general
improvements for the whole province, and has the power of assessing the
taxes necessary for carrying them into effect. Roads, barracks for
_gendarmes_, prisons, hospitals, and schools, are objects of its
attention. Its acts must all be presented to the minister of the interior
at the conclusion of the session, and they acquire validity only from the
time the minister communicates the royal assent to the proceedings.

This system of popular government, in all matters directly connected with
the daily business of the citizens, is a wise arrangement, and it has
proved a powerful engine for the preservation of order amidst a population
accustomed to anarchy, revolution, and despotism; and it has also formed a
firm barrier against the tyrannical aspirations of the Bavarians. Indeed,
had King Otho's government not been prevented, by this municipal system,
from coming into daily contact with the people, we are persuaded that it
would long ago have thrown Greece into convulsions, and caused the
massacre of every Bavarian in the country.

From the account we have given of the royal central government on the one
hand, and of the local magistracy on the other, it will be evident to our
readers that there are two powers at work in Greece, which, unless they
are united in the pursuit of some common objects, must at last engage in a
contest for the mastery.

We shall now notice the newspaper allegation, that the Greek court is
composed entirely of Bavarians. This was once the case, but it ceased to
be strictly true from the moment Armansperg introduced the system of
bribing the Greeks to join the Bavarian party; and at p