under an oath of secresy, and took their measures with the greatest dexterity. They arranged the quarters where each should act, and concerted a rising in Greece which was to have in view the same objects. But they were reckoning on blindness in the Lord High Commissioner, and he was watching their movements and waiting till they were unmasked. At the proper moment the police were at the door: they burst into the room, seized all who were present, and secured the evidence of their papers.

CHAPTER XXXV.

DEPOSES THE PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

It is worthy of note that Sir Howard cannot be charged with a single severity. The defamers of his government never adduced an instance of his overstepping the law, though he came down on his adversaries at every turn with resistless energy. His administration was a continued struggle, but without a stain; and we hear of no hangings, scourgings, or imprisonments, but of unceasing lenity. He was not accused of rigour even in the memorials that denounced him to the Colonial-office, indictments proved to be without a particle of truth, and framed by persons who acknowledged themselves his debtors. His inclination to mercy was so well known, that Sir Edmund Lyons promised pardon to one of the d'Istria conspirators, without deeming it necessary to learn his intentions. "Doctor Mavrojammi," he writes to Sir Howard, "has sent to me to say that he sees his error, and deeply laments having been led into it. I said that, if he really were repentant, it must appear in his conduct, and that you were the last person to shut the door for ever against a political sinner." Indeed, the Lord High Commissioner might have brought the conspirators to the gallows with the evidence he possessed of their guilt; but he regarded them as no worse than

1 Letter from Sir Edmund Lyons, June 24, 1840.

their countrymen in general, and granted them bail as soon as they had been examined.

He looked with a different eye upon their instigators, and especially the chief mover, the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Ionians he could watch, but how was he to guard against the intrigues of Russia and Greece, carried on by a foreign pontiff who ruled the Ionian Church? The problem cost him anxious meditation. He saw a mode of solution, but it involved so bold a measure, that he hesitated to set it in motion until he should have felt his way. What he contemplated was the deposition of the Patriarch, and the establishment of the independence of the Ionian Church, which might be wrested from the Patriarch's successor, by making assent a condition of his promotion. This would cut off a fruitful source of intrigue, while it would be a salutary display of England's power. But he must first establish the Patriarch's guilt in a manner that could not be disputed; and the proofs in his hands might be held inconclusive; so he determined to open his designs to Sir Edmund Lyons, and engage him to obtain evidence.

He had apprised Sir Edmund of the conspiracy, and requested him to procure the seizure of Capo d'Istria's papers at his house in Athens; and he now sent Captain Douglas' to explain to him what he projected. But the Greek Government had no intention of giving up papers so charged with secrets, and postponed their search till they could be put beyond

1 His son, now Major-General Sir R. Percy Douglas, Bart., LieutenantGovernor of Jersey.

reach. Capo d'Istria was warned of their intention, while the King professed a warm regard for Sir Howard, and pronounced the defeat of the conspiracy a service to himself. Nor was such an assertion unwarranted; for the plot contemplated his assassination, though his own duplicity prevented the point being established. His effort to screen the Patriarch did not obtain the same success, for a letter was found proving that he had received an agent from the conspirators, and Sir Howard brought to light a pastoral he had addressed to the lower classes, inciting them to revolt.2

The fact of this complicity came to be understood, and it is a testimony to Sir Howard's wisdom that the step he meditated was recommended to Captain Douglas by Mr. Tricoupi, the leader of the Greek Liberals, and declared by him the only remedy.3 Sir Howard now communicated with Lord Ponsonby, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, and found him well-disposed. Fortunately the foreign affairs of England were then directed by a Minister of great experience, and he saw the question in the same light,

1 "The King said many complimentary things of you, acknowledges the great kindness and attention you have always shown him and the Queen, expressed a wish to have the advantage of seeing you, and begged me to thank you for the steps you had taken in this affair."-Letter from Sir Edmund Lyons, 9th January, 1840.

"I have the honour to forward your Lordship a translated copy of a pamphlet written by his Holiness and transmitted by his emissaries to Zante for circulation among the ignorant classes."-Letter of Sir Howard Douglas to Lord Ponsonby.

3 "I told Mr. Tricoupi that this important and indispensable measure had occupied much of your attention, and that you were only waiting for a more convenient and safer opportunity of doing this, if possible."-Letter from Captain Douglas, dated Athens, 23rd January, 1840.

and caught at the opportunity of effecting an object which would both administer a check to Russia, and shut the door against future intrigues. Lord Palmerston enlisted the support of France and Austria in the project, convincing those powers that the Patriarch was a Russian tool, and that their interests in the Levant were identical with those of England in relation to Russian designs, which penetrated all the countries embraced by the Greek Church.' Marshal Soult declared to Lord Granville that Lord Palmerston's views were his own, and that the Ambassador of France should be instructed to aid the English Ambassador in carrying out their common policy.2

All being ready, the impulse was given to the Porte, and the blow struck. The 'Corfu Gazette' announced to the Ionians that the Patriarch of Constantinople had been deposed. Sir Howard had baffled the Pope, but it required him to move three of the great powers to overthrow the Patriarch. The Ionians were as impressed by his vigour as by the display of England's influence, and the incident told wherever it was reported. "It has confounded the Russian party here," writes Sir Edmund Lyons from Athens.3 And Sir Robert Stopford writes from Malta, "I heartily congratulate you on the success of your energetic measure in putting down that hydra of faction, fomented in

1 "I see that Lord Palmerston invited the Courts of Vienna and Paris to assist in endeavouring to depose the Patriarch.”—Letter from Sir Edmund Lyons to Sir Howard Douglas, March 28, 1840.

Copy of a letter from Lord Granville to Sir Edmund Lyons, in the Douglas Papers.'

Letter to Sir Howard Douglas, March 28, 1840.