THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

346 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
Opposition, and set up his office and press, in the first
instance, in Nauplia, under the very eyes of the Gov-
This was too much for the official mind of
ernment.
the Capodistrian administration.
Constitution or no
constitution, this impious criticism of the Government
must be stopped. The issue of the very
first number
was followed by a police raid on the premises of the
paper; the whole edition was confiscated, and the
machinery and plant taken possession of by the Government.
Polyzoides urged in vain that in Greece,
by the terms of the Constitution, the press was free.
The Government replied that, though the Constitution
did not forbid attacks on officials,
neither did it
authorise them. Driven from Nauplia, Polyzoides
removed the headquarters of his paper to Hydra,
where it flourished under the protection of the Hydriot
communal government, which refused all
the President's
demands for its suppression.
Capodistrias, true to the traditions of his Kussian
schooling, was not taught wisdom by this failure, and
continued his efforts to curb the journalistic opposition.
He protested, indeed, that he had no intention
of interfering with the liberty of the press;
but liberty
was not licence, and he reserved to the Government
the right of deciding when the bounds between
the two had been overstepped
1
The popular poet,