Numismata hellenica: a catalogue of Greek coins; with notes, a map ...

PREFACE. V
extinction of Christianity. The Hellenic valour and enterprise displayed by the modern
Greeks in the Insurgent War, and which moved the admiration of every liberal Chris-
tian in Europe, had no effect upon the British Government. For five long years
Mr. Canning, as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, maintained his pitiless neu-
trality in spite of the entreaties of Russia, Austria, and France, nor ceased until the
European Greeks had lost half their population, and almost all their property, and
until he became himself alarmed at the union of the Egyptian and Turkish armies for
the avowed purpose of clearing the Peloponnesus of its Greek inhabitants, and supplying
their place with Mahometans. It was a persecution more cruel than any that
the early Christians ever experienced, if for no other reason than because it was a
persecution not by Pagans, but by Christians. In the second century of our aera the
non-conformity of the Christians was an ofience against the laws of the empire for
which they underwent a trial, and if found guilty were often executed. At a subsequent
time persecution was a contest between Paganism and Christianity, in which the Chris-
tians often suffered severely, but continued nevertheless to rise superior under all
oppression,
until Christian communities and Christian churches were to be found in
every part of the Roman world. It was not until the reign
of Diocletian that the
ferocious Galerius directed the imperial power in a determined manner against the
Christians, but who were then on the eve of a final triumph over Paganism under Con-
stantine. We may be allowed to doubt, deducting the exaggerations
of Christian
writers, whether there was any thing in the whole course of the Ten Persecutions so
atrocious as the massacres of Chios and Cyprus, caused by British neutrality. In a
mitigated form our persecution of the Greeks still continues, and must continue as long
as we ignore the existence of the Greeks as a Nation, and until the Christian Powers
can be agreed in supplying the Sultan with the means, which he has never possessed, of
executing his treaty engagements, and of enforcing his last Hatti Humayoun, which has
now for near four years remained an unexecuted edict. Had the British Government,
listening to the public voice and following the counsels of the friends of humanity,
interfered in 1821, England would have been saved from the disgrace of having caused
the destruction of thousands of our fellow Christians, and of having arrested for eight
and thirty years the progress of civilization in European Turkey, as well as in Asia
Minor, where the ruins of Kydhonies, one of the most flourishing places of Greek
education, are a monument of the efl^ects of British neutrality.