e on the map of Europe, you are engaged in
solving a problem as delicate and difficult as if it arose on a far more
conspicuous stage. The people he found to be eminently gifted by nature
with that subtlety which is apt to degenerate into sophistry, and prone
to be both rather light-minded and extremely suspicious. The permanent
officials in Downing Street, with less polite analysis, had been
accustomed to regard the islanders more bluntly as a 'pack of scamps.'
This was what had done the mischief. The material condition of the
cultivators was in some respects not bad, but Mr. Gladstone laid down a
profound and solid principle when he said that 'no method of dealing
with a civilised community can be satisfactory which does not make
provision for its political action as well as its social state.'[379]
The idea of political reform had for a time made head against the idea
of union with the Greek kingdom, but for some years past the whole
stream of popular tendency and feeling set strongly towards union, and
disdained contentment with anything else. Mankind turn naturally to the
solutions that seem the simplest. Mr. Gladstone condemned the existing
system as bad for us and bad for them. Circumstances made it impossible
for him to suggest amendment by throwing the burden bodily off our
shoulders, and at that time he undoubtedly regarded union with Greece as
in itself undesirable for the Ionians. Circumstances and his own love of
freedom made it equally impossible to recommend the violent suppression
of the constitution. The only course left open was to turn the mockery
of free government into a reality, and this operation he proposed to
carry out with a bold hand. The details of this enlargement of popular
rights and privileges, and the accompanying financial purgation, do not
now concern us. Whether the case either demanded or permitted
originality in the way of construction I need not discuss. The
manufacture of a constitution is always the easiest thing in the world.
The question is whether the people concerned will work it, and in spite
of that buoyant optimism which never in any circumstances deserted him
in respect of whatever business he might have in hand, Mr. Gladstone
must have doubted whether his islanders would ever pretend to accept
what they did not seek, as a substitute for what they did seek but were
not allowed to have. Before anybody knew the scope of his plan, the six
newspapers flew to arms with a vivacity