Constructing Ionian identities: the Ionian Islands in British official ...

friend Sidney Herbert that his constitutional reforms for the Ionian Islands held “real
importance” for Britain because for the “first time a perfectly honourable and tenable
position in the face of the islands was made”. 163 Others, such as Major General
Joseph Ellison Portlock, were regretful the reforms did not pass. Portlock expressed
his approval that Gladstone's suggestions went further than Seaton's reforms and
believed they revealed the “real position and duties of Great Britain in respect to the
Ionians”. He regretted British misrule in the Islands over the past forty years,
especially after Seaton's tenure, caused them to lose the hearts and minds of the
Ionians. 164
Conclusion
Both Young and Gladstone, as Peelites, had similar liberal views about policies
at home, but were opposite in their views of rule in the Empire. Young had a
separatist view regarding the Islands, believing if they were not made a colony they
should be ceded to Greece. Young inherited the problems of Ward, which affected his
ability to govern the Islands and how he viewed them as a political entity. Like Ward,
he believed in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon British and their culture, seeing
them as uniquely qualified for free political institutions. His belief that the Ionians
were unfit to exercise both central and municipal affairs reinforced the departure
from the Whig’s reformist and more liberal language of the late 1840s. What Young
saw in the Septinsula was a political society which, under the influence of radical
163 Morley J., The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, p. 617.
164 Portlock to Gladstone, 8 September 1859, Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 44392; Portlock to
Gladstone, 5 December 1859, Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 44392.
311