ight have been refused--the glory of their disinterested conduct
was all the reward they wanted; for few of them would have demanded
repayment of the sums due had they been rich enough to offer them as a
gift. The refusal of King Otho to repay these sums when he lavished money
on his Bavarian favourites and Greek partizans, has probably lowered his
character more, both in the East and in Europe, than any of those errors
in diplomacy which induced the _Morning Chronicle_ to publish, that
several Bavarians of rank had written a certificate of his being an idiot,
and forwarded it to his royal father. The sum required to pay up all the
claims of this class, would not have exceeded the agency paid by King Otho
to his Bavarian banker for remitting the loan contracted at Paris to
Greece, by the rather circuitous route of Munich.

It was also expected by the Greeks that one of the first acts of the royal
government would have been to abolish the duty on all articles carried by
sea from one part of the kingdom to another; this duty amounted to six per
cent, and was not abolished until the late demands of the three protecting
powers for prompt payment of the money due to them by his Hellenic
majesty, rendered King Otho rather more amenable to public opinion than he
had been previously. A decree was accordingly published a few months ago,
abolishing this most injurious tax, the preamble of which declares, with
innocent _naivete_, that the duty thus levied is not based on principles
of equal taxation, but bears oppressively on particular classes.[D]
Alas! poor King Otho! he begins to abolish unjust taxation when his
exchequer is empty, and when his creditors are threatening him with the
Gazette; and yet he delays calling together a national assembly. It is
possible that, little by little, King Otho may be persuaded by
circumstances to become a tolerable constitutional sovereign at last; but
we fear our old friend Hadgi Ismael Bey--may his master never diminish the
length of his shadow!--will say on this occasion, as we have heard him say
on some others, "Machallah! Truly, the sense of the ghiaour doth arrive
after the mischief!" But we hold no opinions in common with Hadgi Ismael
Bey, who drinketh water, despiseth the Greek, and hateth the Frank. Our
own conjecture is, that King Otho has been studying the history of
Theopompus, one of his Spartan predecessors who, like himself, occupied
barely half a throne. Colleagues and ephori wer