(To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR, —At the present

juncture, when the British people are called upon to decide on the policy to be adopted by them abroad, and when the Greek question—a question which has so naturally been influenced by recent British policy—has entered a most critical stage, I hope you will allow me to refer to an episode in the history of modern Greece which bears most opportunely on the events of to-day. That King Leopold refused the proffered crown of Greece, because of the insufficiency of the boundaries accorded her, is vaguely believed to be true ; yet those who, with characteristic rashness and contempt for facts, have disputed even Byron's philhellenism, might easily and with equal audacity con- test this belief. It is, therefore, but right that the most authentic documentary proof on this subject should be available. Such proof is the letter I enclose. It was written in May,1830, by Prince Leopold, then residing at Marlborough House, as the Consort of an English Princess, and was addressed to the King of France, Charles X., explaining the reasons of his refusal of the Greek throne. The original of this letter, which, I believe, has never been published, formed part of the collection of auto- graphs belonging to M. Leon Veydt, lately sold at Paris. It was bought by a French gentleman, to whose courtesy I am in- debted for the copy I enclose, but who ceded the original to M. Rucleus, the director of the Royal Library at Brussels, where, I presume, it is now to be seen. To fully appreciate the significance of this document, it is necessary to recollect that the designation of Prince Leopold to the throne of Greece was no sooner mooted, than it was repented of by those very statesmen who first favoured the choice. The Prince soon proved himself too honest, too sincere, too independent, for those whose policy aimed from the first at render- ing Greece helpless, her resuscitation a failure, and her Sovereign a tool subservient to their designs. Therefore, the very terms of the Protocol, solemnly signed on March 22nd, 1829, were as solemnly controverted. Count Capo d'Istria was, from another quarter, influenced so as to represent to Prince Leopold the state of affairs in Greece as discouraging; and the most elementary facilities for the government of a country, devastated and demoralised by eight years of exterminating warfare, were denied to him, as steadily as they were subse- quently supplied with ruinous profuseness to his successor. King Otho, during the first years of his reign, governed with a rod of iron, denying the country even those municipal liberties in which the great mind of a Prince, born to the art of govern- ment, justly discerned the basis of order and prosperity. Even on this point he was not supported ; and the iniquitous policy that refused to Greece the bare elements of existence was anxious, with the infanticidal interest of a baby-farmer, to procure for the newly constituted State, not wholesome food, but deleterious luxuries. How well this policy succeeded in disgusting a candidate who would have been an earthly pro- vidence to Greece, is shown in the remarkable State paper I enclose.

Yet even thus we have existed,—nay, we have progressed with a rapidity which constitutes at this moment, in the opinion of many, the occult opposition to our being strengthened and expanded. That Greece soon began to march in this direction of order, civilisation, and prosperity did not escape the obser- vation of that truly great and wise King. It was still the fashion to decry our backwardness and our failures, when King Leopold, in a conversation with Lord Palmerston, expressed his regret that he had not accepted the throne of Greece, even under the disadvantages he had protested against. Not, indeed, that he was dissatisfied with his lot in Belgium; but, as he added on another occasion, "What might I not have done with the Greeks I Greece is poetry as compared to prose, and there is room for expansion and civilisation in every direction."

The grievous wrong done us was, therefore, of a twofold nature. It is well it should not be forgotten now, when the East is menaced with a feeble repetition of an infatuated polioy. How- that policy was then viewed will best be shown in the words of the late David Urquhart, whose boundless Turcophilism is a.

sure guarantee that he was not misled by any partiality for- Greece. In the fourth chapter of his " Spirit of the East"-

published shortly after the present Greek frontier was marked out, he gives as follows his appreciation of the Greek opinion of the Duke of Wellington--

"The insufficiency, in a military point of view, of the new limits, was so apparent, that ridicule was mingled with exasperation. I must say, I was no less surprised than amused by the shrewdness of some of the remarks The Duke of Wellington,' said they, '113 the, first military man in Europe ; we, of course, rejoiced that such man was to decide on the question of our limits. He has com- manded in Spain, where the mode of warfare resembles our own, and mountains, woods, and rocks defy discipline and science ;- bat what are we to think of this Protocol, that pretends to make peace by taking from us the very positions for which the war is made, and the only defences by which peace is at this hour main- tained ?' I remarked that the Duke of Wellington was deceived by faulty maps. Then,' retorted they, he should have looked at events. It is not this war alone that has proved that Greece has two gates,. and that you need not shut the one, if the other be left open ; and besides, the positions that we have been able to occupy, and by occupy-. ing which (without the assistance of a Protocol) we have maintained peace for the last twelve months, must be the military boundaries,. and even if it were possible to find better, these ought to be sanc- tioned.' " This reads surprisingly like the history of to-day. It is again, the one gate—the gate of Epirus, then won at the expense of thousands of precious lives, and wrenched from us by a stroke- of the pen—it is this gate that they deny us, on the plea of faulty maps, and fictitious protests, and the fraud of an Albanian opposition, which can begin to assume substance only a hundred miles to the north.—I am, Sir, &c., AN EPIROTE.

PRINCE LEOPOLD'S LETTER TO CHARLES X. SIRE,

—It is direct to your Majesty that I deem it a duty to make- known the latest negotiations. It is to you and your kindness that I owe my being designated ; it is, therefore, to the King that I should! render an account of the events that have brought about my resigna- tion. It was to the efforts of your Majesty's Plenipotentiary, whose. zeal I cannot sufficiently commend, that the change in the resolutions respecting the loans was due, a change which, after what I had learnt• at Paris, I could no longer expect. There remained still the settlement• of the terms and conditions of the guarantee, since their nature alone- could decide the validity and usefulness of the guarantee itself. Well, then, the first article of the Protocol of February 20th,. which promises the territorial guarantee, and the fifth article, the ex- pressions of which relate to your Majesty's troops, are not those of my adhesion, which specified an entire brigade. Your Majesty will be pleased to remember that clause, as it had been changed even after- the signing of the Protocol, in accordance with your wish. The strict sense of loyalty with which the King keeps to his engagements towards his allies would have made it impossible, without further ex- planation, to send later on a reinforcement to that body of troops.. Next to this, the most important thing, as much for the Greeks as for myself, would have been the actual treaty, which ought to have been drawn up under my own eyes ; for, from the little experience I have had in the affairs of the world, it seems to me certain that -the- absent and the weak can easily be found in fault. Meanwhile, there have arrived from Greece communications of the• utmost importance for me. I will venture, with the permission of the King, to submit to his inspection, through the Doc d'Orleans, these documents in their entirety. But, meantime, I may quote some- portions of them. The President of Greece informs me that the Senate has received the communications that he had to make to them in a gloomy silence, and that they subsequently declared to him that they never would give their assent to the Protocols, as they had not the right to do so ; the Assembly of the Representatives of the Nation having reserved to themselves exclusively the right of confirming any arrangement of that nature ; that if they possessed the power to do so, they would refuse to adhere to any stipulations which it would be contrary to. their conscience to accept, by sacrificing their brethren in continental Greece, in Candia, Samos, &c. The King, with that generosity of spirit that distinguishes him, will be pleased to look with indulgence- upon these sentiments, -which are but natural.

Since the commencement of these negotiations, the King himself has been in favour of each boundaries as would assure peace,—the principal aim of the Treaty of July 6th, 1827.

The Memorandum of your Majesty's Plenipotentiary annexed to. the Protocol of March 22nd, 1829, testifies to this in the most honour. able manner, for in that memorandum your Majesty proposes the• boundaries not only of Arta and Yolo, which the Treaty of Adrianople. had already secured to Greece, but Candia also. It will be impossible to bring back the Greeks from all these hopes, which are justified by the Protocol of March 22nd and the peace of Adrianople. They will look upon the Protocol of February 3rd as despoiling them of a frontier which, to a large extent, belongs to them de facto. From the very commencement of the negotiations, my language has ever been the same. I have made the greatest efforts to bring about an arrangement which would have been for the advantage of the three allied Courts ; for that of Austria, who has a particular interest in seeing Greece withdrawn from all foreign influence of the ; that of Italy, for whom Greece in a state of commotion is not a pleasant neighbour; and finally, of the highest importance for

the Porte itself. An arrangement of such a nature would have -satisfied the desires of the Greeks ; and if mad ambitions were carried farther, then the Powers would have had the right to suppress them with the utmost severity. The Sovereign whom the Powers would have given to the Greeks would have been received under such auspices with meat unanimous acclamations. As it is, the position is • quite changed ; such a Sovereign finds himself necessarily bound up in their minds with a delimitation impossible of realisation, and with an arrangement that is mortifying to them. The Provisional Govern- ment has given in very adroit terms its adhesion, drawn up in such a manner as to constitute a protest.

The President, in order to induce the Senate to approve of that :reply, has interpreted the silence of the Protocols upon the public rights of the Greeks, without any authorisation on my part, according to sentiments of his own.

The Senate has just forwarded a memorandum to me. I agree in everything it says as to the delimitations, but not as to the 'Constitution.

I must, in the most perfect frankness, submit to the Ring the 'views that I myself had formed upon the internal organisation of Greece. My desire had been, in the first place, to see the National Assembly invest the Provisional Government with all the powers of -the State, that it might accede to and ratify, in the name of the -country, all the necessary arrangements, and in order to avoid treating with that Assembly.

I have the honour to be sufficiently well known to the King for ;him to do me the justice to believe that there is nothing despotic in my inclinations. But my conviction is, that the small amount of morality among public men in Greece, their factious dispositions, their local hatreds, render them little capable of possessing from the wary outset too liberal a representative system.

My intention would have been to have a Conservative Senate, a -good administration of justice, free from corruption, and to grant to 'the Communes liberties sufficiently large for their municipal govern- ment, with the double object of accustoming them to manage their -own affairs, and of remedying that terrible propensity of influential men in Greece to rob and oppress the people. Thus the nation would have been gradually prepared to receive institutions more extended and more calculated to restore its character.

Your Majesty will deign to judge of the pitiful state in which the new Sovereign would find himself placed, on the one hand sharing the -odium that the settlement of the boundaries possesses in the eyes of the Greeks, and in the cruel alternative of accepting a constitution that would perhaps render his government useless, or of refusing it, -which would have rendered his position with the country most dis- greeable.

There remained for me no other means of issuing from this em- barrassing situation than to resign, with the deepest regret, the thonoumble task that the allied Courts had entrusted to me.

This statement is much longer than a letter to the King ought to the; but it was my heartfelt desire to submit to your Majesty's inspec- tion the various circumstances that have decided me to resign a career which you, in particular, had entrusted to me, with a kind- -ness of which I shall ever retain the most grateful remembrance.

May this resignation at least bring about a result that would be most desirable,—that of effecting an alteration in the boundaries of -Greece ; from it I should derive the deepest satisfaction. Beseech- ing your Majesty to accept the homage of my ever-sincere devotion, I have the honour to be, Sire, your Majesty's most humble and most