poetical and enthusiastic spirit inherent in the people, and to keep alive among them the love of liberty and the hope of independence.

As long as a Christian tribe maintained itself in one of the strongest positions of Northern Greece, the mountain population maintained in many places that degree of liberty and self-protection which it had enjoyed from the time of the Turkish conquest; but when Suli, after a valiant resistance of thirteen years against all the resources of the power, wealth, craft, and treachery of Aly, had sunk under the effects of famine and deficient numbers, his influence found its way into every part of Northern Greece, and left very few retreats in which the Greeks could enjoy the fruits of their industry in safety.

It was most fortunate for the Ottoman government, that when the causes, which have at length produced a general insurrection, had begun to operate very extensively, and when the French revolution, and the ambition of its leaders, threatened the Porte with an immediate explosion, the military strength of Greece and Albania was more concentrated than ever.

Aly Pasha may have thwarted the execution of all the measures of the Porte which tended to

reduce his authority, and in general those which did not originate with himself; he may have transmitted a larger sum to Constantinople in the shape of presents to persons in power, than in that of tribute to the imperial treasury; and, in the latter respect, he may never have sent as much as satisfied the wishes of government; nevertheless it is probable that the Porte, during his reign, was more truly master of Greece than it had ever been before, and that it derived, upon the whole, as much revenue from the country; while it is certain, that by leaving Aly to oppose the armed Greeks to one another, and to suppress the spirit of revolt by the military strength of Albania, she most effectually secured herself against the consequences of foreign intrigues among the Christian subjects of European Turkey; and that the concentration of power in Aly's hands was the best protection which the empire could possess on a frontier, where it was endangered by the increase of the power of France, not less than the North-Eeastern side was menaced by the encroachments of Russia.

We may now proceed to lay before the reader a brief narrative of the origin and progress of the Greek insurrection.

No sooner had the present Sultan Mahmoud been placed upon the throne, than he began to indicate talents and a temper not easily directed by others, together with an intention of pursuing a line of policy, which, founded on Mohammedan bigotry, and on ignorance of the real situation of his empire, was less suited to his own times than to those of Selim the First or Solyman the Second. One of his favourite projects was the destruction of the great chieftains who, in several of the provinces, partly from motives of ambition, and partly in their own defence against the avidity and treachery of the Porte, had retained their offices for a long succession of years, in opposition to all the attempts of the supreme government to remove them, gradually increasing the circle of their power, placing their relations and dependents in subordinate situations around them, and in some instances transmitting their authority to their heirs.

This usurpation of power by a few strong hands, although at once both a consequence and a cause of the weakness of the Ottoman government, had, as we have already hinted, been the best security of the empire, during the dangers of the French revolution; and, if prudently ma

naged, might still have saved it for some time from the effects of the degeneracy of the people, both as Moslems and as soldiers, which, when contrasted with the great advances made by Christian Europe in military power and the art of war, has now for many years threatened Turkey with the most imminent danger. But the Porte, blind to more important considerations, was sensible only to wounded pride and to the loss of immediate authority and revenue. Before Mahmoud had been ten years on the throne, none of the great permanent provincial governors remained, except Aly of Ioannina and Mohammed Aly of Egypt, the latter of whom can hardly enter into consideration on this occasion, Egypt having seldom been thoroughly under the dominion of the Porte, but generally in an intermediate state between the submission of the Ottoman provinces and the mere nominal subjection of the Barbary states.

It was not until after the general pacification of Europe, that the Sultan and his favourite counsellors, finding the Albanian Aly no longer important in the protection of the North-Western frontier of the empire, and impatient to obtain his treasures before his death should place them in

the hands of his sons, began their operations against him by favouring his enemy Ismaïl Pashó Bey, who, no longer daring to reside at Ioannina, had become a fugitive at Constantinople. An imprudent attempt of some emissaries of Aly in the spring of 1820 to assassinate Ismaïl, became the chief ostensible cause of the Firmahn which was immediately issued against Aly, and which was followed by the appointment of Ismaïl to the Pashalik of Ioannina, and to the command of the army which was destined to reduce that place. As in every great revolution, it is found that many concurrent causes prepare the way, but that one fortuitous event determines the period of its commencement, so it cannot be doubted that the declaration of the Porte against Aly was the immediate cause of the Greek insurrection. The great preparing cause, as we have already seen, was the degeneracy of the one people and the improvement of the other: the recent example of Spanish America, of Spain itself, of Portugal, and of Italy, formed undoubtedly another link in the chain of circumstances, destined by Providence to bring about this event.

The Greeks residing in Europe had naturally been in the habit of looking chiefly to Russia as