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

CONCLUDING REMARKS 401
best have been effected by doing what Russia most
dreaded, and founding a Greek State on a basis so
strong that there would have been no danger of its becoming
a mere appanage of more powerful neighbours.
Broadly speaking, this was the only possible policy
worthy of the name for it was the
;
only policy which
the English people would, in the long run, tolerate.
But the conditions under which English statesmen
work make a really strong and consistent foreign policy
almost impossible. Wellington had been hampered
by the Philhellenic legacies of Canning Palmerston
was hampered by the Turcophile tradition of
;
the Tories. In opposition, he had advocated the inclusion
of Crete in the Hellenic kingdom, a course which
would have obviated many future troubles; in office,
he could effect no more than the extension of the
frontier to the line of Arta-Yolo. The Greece thus
created was strong, but not strong enough to make her
contented; and 'what the mixture of strength and
discontent engenders needs no syllogism to prove.' *
"Whilst the Philhellenic policy of the British
Government had thus succeeded only in achieving
either too much or too the little, pro-Turkish policy
into which it speedily relapsed could never be rendered
i Lord Burleigh's Advice to Queen Elisabeth, &c. Fourth
collection of Somers' Tracts, i. 101.
26