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

CHARACTER OF CAPODISTRIAS 371
mass of opinion his Government has been condemned.
It was condemned indeed by its failure, for it could
have been justified only by success. If his iron-bound
system of bureaucracy could have secured order for a
time to the distracted country, this might have been
cheaply bought at the cost of a temporary sacrifice of
liberty. As it was, liberty was sacrificed, without
order being secured ; and, this being so, the unconstitutional
dealings of Capodistrias may be stigmatised,
in the language of Talleyrand, as worse than a crime
as a mistake; for where methods confessedly dishonest,
but defended on the ground of expediency,
fail, it may be permitted to assert that honesty would
have been the best policy. Baron von Prokesch-Osten
indeed, writing from the point of view of the entourage
of Prince Metternich, considers the policy of the President
the only one possible under the then existing conditions,
and ascribes its failure
to the factious opposition
of greedy adventurers, unprincipled agitators,
radical windbags, et hoc genus omne, aided and abetted
by the unscrupulous machinations of the English
and French Residents.
But this is
only to say that Capodistrias failed,
as Metternich failed, because he had not sufficient sympathetic
imagination to grasp all the conditions of the
problem he was called upon to solve, and persisted in