Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir by Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
page 78 of 274 (28%)
page 78 of 274 (28%)
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make money all their lives fit people to be entrusted with such a
Commission? _There is not one Patriot among them!_ And they are accountable to no one by law, for there are no laws in the land. 'Money has arrived lately from the Greek Committee and it was put into the hands of the Provisional Govt. What they have done with the _whole_ of it I do not know; some they have given to Odysseus. When he heard that money was coming from England to Napoli he left his stronghold in Parnassus and came down with the small retinue of 300 men to demand of the Govt. some remuneration for his services, he had expelled the Turks from Livadia, and he now required that they would pay 5000 men for him. This Odysseus is the only man whom I should call a Patriot among them. So different in style is the free Mountain Chief from the Lowland long enslaved Greek, that you would hardly believe them to belong to the same nation. Odysseus ever called and thought himself free, and his family before him never own'd the dominion of the Turk, living in inaccessible holds no Turkish turbaned head was ever near them. This man tho' wild and untaught is patriotic, brave, devoid of superstition, and last and most rare among the Greeks, has an utter contempt for money. He has talents for war or peace, and the most moderate in his principles of any of them. If there is a man in Greece who is to be depended on _he_ is the man. He maintains that one of the greatest steps towards the well-being of Greece is the putting down the ascendancy of the Priests, with that you will put down intolerant avarice and much crime. At first the Govt. would not give much ear to his demands, but he goes to them in person, stripped of his arms, telling them he is no longer a soldier, that he would turn barber for he could shave; he said he would get an honest livelihood as a poor man but not pilfer &c. _as some of his friends did_ who had neither patriotism or virtue, and who thought of nothing but aggrandizing and |
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