ary Prince of
Greece, under the nominal suzerainty of the sultan; their real intention
being to use him as a tool in return for their protection, and to employ
him as a political counter-balance to the hospodars of Moldavia and
Wallachia, who for the last twenty years had been simply Russian agents
in disguise, This was not all; many of the adventurers with whom the
Levant swarms, outlaws from every country, had found a refuge in Albania,
and helped not a little to excite Ali's ambition by their suggestions.
Some of these men frequently saluted him as King, a title which he
affected to reject with indignation; and he disdained to imitate other
states by raising a private standard of his own, preferring not to
compromise his real power by puerile displays of dignity; and he lamented
the foolish ambition of his children, who would ruin him, he said, by
aiming, each, at becoming a vizier. Therefore he did not place his hope
or confidence in them, but in the adventurers of every sort and kind,
pirates, coiners, renegades, assassins, whom he kept in his pay and
regarded as his best support. These he sought to attach to his person as
men who might some day be found useful, for he did not allow the many
favours of fortune to blind him to the real danger of his position. A
vizier," he was answered, "resembles a man wrapped in costly furs, but he
sits on a barrel of powder, which only requires a spark to explode it."
The Divan granted all the concessions which Ali demanded, affecting
ignorance of his projects of revolt and his intelligence with the enemies
of the State; but then apparent weakness was merely prudent temporising.
It was considered that Ali, already advanced in years, could not live
much longer, and it was hoped that, at his death, Continental Greece, now
in some measure detached from the Ottoman rule, would again fall under
the sultan's sway.

Meanwhile, Pacho Bey, bent on silently undermining Ali's influence; had
established himself as an intermediary for all those who came to demand
justice on account of the pacha's exactions, and he contrived that both
his own complaints and those of his clients, should penetrate to the ears
of the sultan; who, pitying his misfortunes, made him a kapidgi-bachi, as
a commencement of better things. About this time the sultan also
admitted to the Council a certain Abdi Effendi of Larissa, one of the
richest nobles of Thessaly, who had been compelled by the tyranny of Veli
Pacha