situated on the northern side of the Danube;-but these are points, among many others of equal importance, which we apprehend it may be necessary to arrange by a congress of the great powers of Europe. The Greek question, it would appear, is left to be reconsidered in London, not only as to the boundaries, but, we trust, also as to the future government of the emancipated districts. The man who by intrigue, by bribery, and by menace, has succeeded in placing himself at the head of the Greek government, is a political adventurer, and a mere tool in the hands of Russia. We say this advisedly. When Russia was required by the allied powers to give up the Ionian Islands, to be placed under the protection of Great Britain, she felt exceedingly sore at this arrangement. At that time the family of Capo d'Istrias had great influence in these islands, and Count John, the present president of Greece, was one of the Russian ministers at Petersburg. The old count and his family, resident in Corfu, with all their adherents, were in open and violent opposition to every measure of the British government; all its views and intentions were misrepresented, and their unfounded grievances and calumnies were advocated in the British parliament by Mr. Henry Grey Bennett, and Mr. Joseph Hume; and in Petersburgh by Count John Capo d'Istrias, to whom the old father wrote that, among other barbarities committed by the English, they had designedly imported the plague into Corfu, with the view of reducing the people to such a state of despondency and entire submission, as to allow the Lord High Commissioner to avoid the fulfilment of such parts of the treaty as were not exactly to his liking. This letter from the father to the son was intercepted, read, and forwarded; but the Emperor Alexander knew the English too well to take any public notice of the absurd story of this silly old Ionian. On this ground alone, we do not think that either England, France, or Austria ought to consider Count John Capo d'Istrias as a fit person to be placed at the head of the Greek government. It is, in fact, neither more nor less than throwing Greece into the hands of Russia, between which and Servia, the province of Albania only is interposed. To talk of the independence of Greece under such a man as Capo d'Istrias is a farce. Let us see what has been his conduct since his arrival. At the national assembly of the Greek deputies, for the choice of a ruler, held in June last at Argos, he had the indecency to appear in a full dress Russian uniform, decorated with Russian orders; and to protect his august person against any retaliation on the part of some of the deputies whom he had insulted, and to intimidate the assembly, he surrounded himself with Colocotroni's troops, troops, which also bivouacked on the steps of the building in which the assembly was held thus circumstanced, he had everything in his own way; he made long speeches, but not one deputy ventured to utter a single word. He is accused, how justly we know not, of expending the money sent by Russia and France, in bribes to the electors and deputies; and, in order to secure a majority for himself, he had the unparalleled audacity to bring forward Greek deputies from Candia, Scio, Samos, Negropont, and other islands and places still in the possession of the Turks, and not included within the line of demarcation drawn by the allied powers for the boundaries of future Greece ; but these arrangements he privately affects to despise, and talks of his conquests and the determination of the Greeks to extend the boundaries beyond the line proposed by the allies. His conquests, indeed! Had it not been for that impolitic attack, to give it no harsher name, on the Turkish fleet in Navarin, planned, as it would now seem, by a Russian admiral and for Russian objects -had we not compelled Ibrahim Pasha to withdraw his troops, and the remains of the Egyptian fleet to move homewards,-and had not a large French force landed on the Morea,-it is clear, almost to demonstration, that the Russian army would never have crossed the Balkan, the Greek question would probably have been settled by the ambassadors then negotiating in Constantinople, and the whole state of the Russian war materially altered. Then might Count John Capo d'Istrias, with his brother, a man still more generally obnoxious to the Greeks than himself, have taken their departure for Russia, without the assistance and eclât of an English line of battle ship, which afforded them a conveyance from Ancona to the Morea; and in return for which piece of service, as well as civility, the said count cannot conceal the bitterness and animosity which he harbours against the English government, and to which he is said to give utterance in his conversation, to a degree of indecency and irritation that is quite laughable. That gallant officer, General Church, to whom singly the Greeks are more indebted than to any other individual, has retired in disgust, declaring, that the actual system of the government of Greece is not in harmony with his opinions or conscience.' If, therefore, it be meant to give to the fickle, and by no means united, Greeks a steady and independent government, we are morally certain that this object will never be accomplished under the administration of Count John Capo d'Istrias. We should be very happy to hear confirmed the rumour of a congress, to be held for the settlement of these important questions. It is time, if the peace of Europe is to be preserved. ART. ART. VIII.-1. Fourth Report of the Select Committee of the Public Income and Expenditure of the United Kingdom. Revenue, Expenditure, Debt. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 10 July, 1828. 2. Histoire Financière de la France depuis l'Origine de la Monarchie jusqu'à l'Année 1828. Par Jacques Brisson. 2 tom. Paris. 1829. 3. Essay on the Sinking Fund. By Lord Grenville. 1829. 4. The Nature and Tendency of a Sinking Fund; in three Letters to the Duke of Wellington. By the Earl of Lauderdale. 1829. 5. Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into and to state the Mode of keeping the Official Accounts in the principal Departments connected with the Receipts and the Expenditure for the Public Service. 1829. THE system of defraying the public services by borrowed money, and of pledging the future taxes for payment of the interest, took its rise in Genoa and Venice, was matured in Holland, and was thence introduced into England by King William. That prince found here a debt of little more than one million, the interest on which had for some time ceased to be paid; but a series of campaigns, then new to this country, required new expenses, and these occasioned loans which, at the peace of Ryswick, had amounted to more than twenty millions sterling. This money had been raised chiefly in eight per cent. stock, on the security of specific taxes, which were considered sufficient within a few years to pay off the capital, as well as to meet the accruing interest. Accordingly, five of these twenty millions were replaced before the subsequent war of Queen Anne. But the honours of Marlborough could not be won without treasure; and thirty-five millions being raised at six and at eight per cent., peace found us with a debt of fifty-two millions, entailing an annual charge of 3,351,000l. This small yearly claim drew very deeply from our great grandfathers' pockets, the country gentlemen saw bankruptcy at their elbows, and the peaceful reign of George I. was passed by Sir Robert Walpole in measures of financial arrangement. The taxes pledged to the public creditor were collected into three funds, the joint surplus of which formed, in 1716, the first Sinking Fund. This new machinery was long the nation's hope; but in 1732 it was sacrificed by Sir Robert to his desire of relieving the country party from the weight of the land-tax. Still the peace did, as usual, lower profits, and the interest of the debt was reduced at first to five, and later to four per cent.: so that although, after twenty-three years of repose, its capital was diminished by - four four millions only, the annual charge no longer amounted to more than two. The fears which even this amount was able to awaken are recorded by George, Lord Lyttleton, in a period, the dignity of which is for our ears somewhat impaired by the arithmetical proportions of its object. Our well equipt fleets and well drest troops,' writes that excellent nobleman, give to be sure an air of magnificence; but then, it is well known that we owe almost fifty millions, and have been forced to apply the sinking fund not to discharge that debt but to furnish out these shows; while in most parts of England, gentlemen's rents are so ill paid, and the weight of taxes lies so heavy upon them, that those who have nothing from the court can scarce support their families.' If country gentlemen find their rents light and taxes heavy, they do not now seek a remedy from the court, which, indeed, it happily can no longer afford. During the first war of George II., money was borrowed in three per cent. stock at par, until the Scottish rebellion enhanced the terms. 'Our parliamentary aids,' writes Lord Bolingbroke, circumstantially, after the renewal of peace, from the year 1740 exclusively, to the year 1748 inclusively, amount to 55,522,159l., a sum that will appear incredible to future generations, and is so almost to the present.' The single year of Waterloo has seen this incredible expenditure doubled. Mr. Pelham, availing himself of the peace, reduced to the lowest rate of known interest the greater part of the public securities, which he united in a fund thence called the Three per cent. Reduced Annuities. Those debts which already bore no heavier rate, were in like manner consolidated, and henceforth bore the familiar name of Three per cent. Consols. The amount of the debt may be learnt from these forebodings of a contemporary: It has been a generally received notion among political arithmeticians' (economists, they now delight to be called) that we may increase our national debt to one hundred millions, but they acknowledge that it must then cease by the debtor becoming bankrupt. But it is very difficult to comprehend, if we do not stop at seventy-five millions, where we shall stop.' The question so long since stated has not been yet solved. Speedily did those numerical philosophers see their received notions refuted: to this debt of seventy-four millions, the war of Frederic added another sixty-four, nearly an equal amount: our debt, indeed, has increased, not by an arithmetical ratio; each war of equal extent has not entailed an equal addition of charge, but it has grown with a geometrical impulse; the new load of each contest has nearly equalled the united burthen of all which preceded it. Scarcely, however, had the American war broken forth, when the old anticipations received Dr. Price's sanction. We are now,' he he writes, involved in another war, and the public debts are in creasing again fast. The present year (1777) must make another great addition to them; and what they will be at the end of these troubles, no one can tell. The union of foreign war to the present civil war might perhaps raise them to two hundred millions, but more probably it would sink them to nothing. Colonial defeat, aggravated, as the Doctor had surmised, by ungenerous neighbours, exceeded his estimate, and added one hundred and twenty to the one hundred and twenty-eight millions of our previous incumbrances; while the annual charge of four and a half millions, more than observing this law of increase, received an addition of five millions. Mr. Pitt, the young chief of the Treasury, found debt in the exchequer and despair in the mind of the public. After taking successful measures for the improvement of the revenue, he restored confidence by renewing the Sinking Fund, which he endowed with a sum of one milliona surplus destined to grow, at compound interest, until it reached four annual millions. The fund was reinforced in 1792; and it was enacted, further, that all future loans should be accompanied by a special provision for their redemption, amounting yearly to one per cent. on their capital. War came upon us in the next year; and in 1797, government, deeply indebted to the national bank, restrained that body from payments in cash. In the same year, a compulsory loan was meditated; but the public no sooner heard of this intention, than books were opened, and within four days eighteen millions were subscribed, thence called the Loyalty Loan. The three per cents., however, sank to 47, and public credit could only be restored by the strong, but new and unpopular aid of an income-tax. At the peace of Amiens, the annual charge had been again doubled-being now fully twenty millions steriing. War, however, was renewed; every sea swept, every nation subsidized, and a British army once again maintained on the Continent. If aught could have damped the hour of righteous triumph, a patriot's heart might have sunk before eight hundred millions of debt, and an annual charge of thirty-two millions. So stood the account against us at the close of the year of Waterloo. Then, however, the diminished paper pound lightened our annual burthens by nearly one-fourth. The details of this phenomenon we have so lately discussed, that we will now offer but this one remark on the subject. If our treasury unconsciously discharged the dividends for a very few years at an impoverished standard, the low state of our silver coinage favoured the error; but if their practice thus countenanced that debasement of currency by which nearly all European states have within the last forty years defrauded |