A History of Greece Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... Ch. V. now terminated. They were themselves involved in a struggle to maintain their national existence against political anarchy and external attacks. But their domination in Greece had not been without its use; it had accomplished a task which neither the Roman power nor the Orthodox Church had effected; it had nationalized the Greeks, and compressed their various communities into one body. A great cycle in the history of Greece was completed. The tribe of Othman had fulfilled its mission in Hellas, and it was now to depart from the land, like the Romans, the Crusaders, and the Venetians. On the other hand, the desire of civil liberty had already germinated in the modern Greek nation which the Othoman rule had formed. Political institutions of a permanent character existed, and were rapidly giving a new organic form to Greek society. Communities and municipalities, governed by established laws and usages, secured a basis for popular self-government. Provincial assemblies for fiscal purposes, though used only as instruments of Othoman oppression, afforded the means of connecting local liberties with national centralization. Throughout the East it was felt that the hour of a great struggle for independence on the part of the Greeks had arrived. The Greek Revolution was a social and political necessity. National sovereignty is an inherent right of the people, as civil liberty is of the individual. Men know instinctively that there are conditions and times when the rebellion of subject nations and of disfranchised citizens becomes a duty. 'The liberties of nations are from God and nature, not from kings and governments.' The whole history of the Othoman domination in Greece attests that the Greeks were perpetually urged, by every feeling...