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

CONCLUDING REMARKS 399
istic as the views and aims of the two statesmen really
were, he might ultimately
have united with Metternich
in creating a powerful Greece.
With Turkey tied
hand and foot in the power of Russia, this would indeed
have seemed the obvious policy for England, as
for Austria, to pursue.
But the tradition of friendship
for the Ottoman Empire was too strong for the Tory
statesmen into whose hands the fate of Hellas had been
in the first instance committed. They had inherited
from Canning a policy which they loathed; and
pledged as they were to bestow some measure of liberty
upon Greece, they doled this out with a niggard
hand. They seemed to hope that, if they reduced the
concessions to Greece to the lowest possible point,
Turkey might, after all,
consent to overlook this unfriendly
action on the part of a friendly Power.
'
But
no man loves one the better for giving him the bastinado,
though with never so little a cudgel/ *
and possibly
even hates one the worse, if the beating be accompanied
by expressions of affection and esteem. To
the Ottoman Government the attitude of Great Britain,
even before the battle of Navarino, was frankly
incomprehensible. While Lord Strangford, at Constantinople,
was protesting the goodwill of England
i Burleigh's Advice to Queen Elizabeth, &c.
Fourth collection
of Somers' Tracts, i. 101.