The mortally morbid condition of
public feeling is shown, not in the fact that the Hon. X. or Y. is
an immoral man, but in that he is not in the least discredited by
well-known immoralities which would banish a man from public life in
England or America, and compared with which those with which Crispi
was charged were trivial.
One cannot pronounce the same judgment on Greece and Italy. The decay
in Greece is economic and civic, poverty of resource and resources on
one side, and on the other invincible insubordination, refusal in the
individual to submit to discipline or sacrifice, the conceit of a dead
and forgotten superiority which makes progress or docility impossible.
The measure of apparent renovation in Athens and some other points is
owing to the influence and benefactions of the Greeks who have lived
and prospered in other lands, where their natural mental activity has
borne fruit, but the normal progress of the nation is so slight that
it has no chance in the race of races now being run in the Balkans.
But the Greeks are preserved from a moral decay like that which
threatens Italy by the domestic morality, due in part to temperament,
but in part also to the influence of the clergy, who, if not scholars
and wise theologians, are generally men of pure domestic morality and
leaders of the common people. The Orthodox Church is national, lives
with and for the people, has no political ambitions, and cannot
endanger the state.
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