gard the dictates of justice and humanity.

And now, Sir, what has been the conduct pursued by the Allied Powers in
regard to this contest? When the revolution broke out, the sovereigns
were assembled in congress at Laybach; and the papers of that assembly
sufficiently manifest their sentiments. They proclaim their abhorrence
of those "criminal combinations which had been formed in the eastern
parts of Europe"; and, although it is possible that this denunciation
was aimed, more particularly, at the disturbances in the provinces of
Wallachia and Moldavia, yet no exception is made, from its general
terms, in favor of those events in Greece which were properly the
commencement of her revolution, and which could not but be well known at
Laybach, before the date of these declarations. Now it must be
remembered, that Russia was a leading party in this denunciation of the
efforts of the Greeks to achieve their liberation; and it cannot but be
expected by Russia, that the world should also remember what part she
herself has heretofore acted in the same concern. It is notorious, that
within the last half-century she has again and again excited the Greeks
to rebellion against the Porte, and that she has constantly kept alive
in them the hope that she would, one day, by her own great power, break
the yoke of their oppressor. Indeed, the earnest attention with which
Russia has regarded Greece goes much farther back than to the time I
have mentioned. Ivan the Third, in 1482, having espoused a Grecian
princess, heiress of the last Greek Emperor, discarded St. George from
the Russian arms, and adopted the Greek two-headed black eagle, which
has continued in the Russian arms to the present day. In virtue of the
same marriage, the Russian princes claim the Greek throne as their
inheritance.

Under Peter the Great, the policy of Russia developed itself more fully.
In 1696, he rendered himself master of Azof, and, in 1698, obtained the
right to pass the Dardanelles, and to maintain, by that route,
commercial intercourse with the Mediterranean. He had emissaries
throughout Greece, and particularly applied himself to gain the clergy.
He adopted the _Labarum_ of Constantine, "In hoc signo vinces"; and
medals were struck, with the inscription, "Petrus I. Russo-Graecorum
Imperator." In whatever new direction the principles of the Holy
Alliance may now lead the politics of Russia, or whatever course she may
suppose Christianity now prescribes