UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Class , 
 
 Book , 
 
 Volume 
 
 Ja 09-20M 
 
APPEAL 
 
 UNIVERSITY of ILLINOIS. 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 RELIEVP: from starvation the AVOMEN ANJ) 
 CHILDREN OF THE GREEKS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ISLAND OF CRETE. 
 
APPEAL 
 
 TO THE 
 
 PEOPLE OE THE UNITED STATES 
 
 TO 
 
 RELIEVE FROM STARVATION THE WOMEN AND 
 CHILDREN OF THE GREEKS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ISLAND OF CRETE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, PRINTERS, 3 CORNHTLL. 
 1 867. 
 
Cfl tlje IPcopIc ai llje Wimtti) Slates. 
 
 > 
 
 I Thousands of the women and children of the Island of Crete 
 
 ^ (or Candia) appeal to Europe and America to save them 
 from starvation. We will briefly state the causes of their suf- 
 fering, and the necessity for its relief. 
 
 The Greek Revolution of 1821 lasted nine years. Of that 
 revolution, the Greeks of the large Island of Crete were an 
 integral part; and, when the Allied Powers intervened to 
 determine the boundaries of Greece, Cretan successes had made 
 the expulsion of the Turks from the island a certainty. Against 
 the prophetic protests of statesmen like Palmerston, and to 
 the horror of all Greece, the island was made over by the 
 Allied Powers to Turkey ; thus sacrificing the integrity, of a 
 race to a short-sighted diplomacy. From that day, Crete has 
 7 been, confessedly, the worst governed of the Turkish prov- 
 inces. The will of her governor has virtually been her only 
 law ; and, under the Turkish system of farming out her reve- 
 nues, he pays an agreed sum to the Sultan, and then, under 
 the name of taxes, extorts almost all of the yearly hard earn- 
 ings of the people, whose personal and political rights he 
 tramples under foot. Crete has protested in vain. She has 
 respectfully and repeatedly appealed to the Sultan to give 
 her the civil and religious rights guaranteed by the protocols 
 of i>he Allied Powers and by his own later edicts, only to 
 be spurned with contempt. 
 
 At last, human nature could endure such oppression no 
 longer ; and, on the 28th day of August last, the Cretans raised 
 the Greek flag. Fighting began, and, notwithstanding the 
 telegraphic despatches received through Turkish channels, is 
 ably and fiercely maintained. Greeks from Greece and else- 
 where, and Garibaldians from Italy, are pouring in to their 
 
4 
 
 aid. Turkey, utterly bankrupt, has called in the aid of Egypt. 
 The Cretans ask for neither arms nor ammunition. They can 
 do the fighting. They only ask that we save from actual 
 starvation their women and cliildren, who have fled and are 
 flying to the neighboring islands and to Greece. Ten thou- 
 sand of them have already reached Athens. Greece and 
 Athens are themselves poor. As laying the country utterly 
 waste, and the absolute extermination of men, women, and 
 children, are the rules of Turkish warfare, and as the fighting 
 men need the suppHes consumed by the women and children, 
 the Greeks propose to send away all of them. Once away, we 
 have as indisputable a right, under international law, to save 
 them from starvation, as if they were landed starving in Canada 
 or on our own shores. In the Revolution of 1821, American 
 supplies sought out and relieved the sufl'ering women and 
 children upon the island itself ; and America is a sweet name 
 in all Greek ears to-day. 
 
 It is not only a war for the relief of Crete from intolerable 
 oppression : it is a war for the restoration of the integrity of 
 the Greek race under one nationality ; for Christianity against 
 Mahometanism ; for civilization against barbarism. It appeals 
 to our common humanity, to our love of liberty, to our Chris- 
 tian faith. Were there no more imperative duty,' and no 
 more inspiring sentiment, it appeals to us as a commercial 
 people, in the prospect of an enlarged, substantial, and friend- 
 ly Greek nation opening new sources of trade with the Levant, 
 and re-civilizing Asia Minor and Judsea. 
 
 This sad cry of distress is irresistible. We have, to be 
 sure, our own poor and our own necessary charities. We 
 have, too, our own extravagance and waste. Denying no 
 just charity at home, let us remember that our own women 
 and children are not starving. ^ 
 
 The letter from our estimable United-States consul in Crete, 
 which we print below, and a letter from the Cretan Central 
 Committee to Dr. Samuel G. Howe of Boston, confirmed by 
 public and private advices, induced the call for a public meet- 
 ing, the eloquent addresses there made and herewith pre- 
 sented, and the appointment of a committee of citizens of 
 
Boston, and other citizens of Massaclmsetts, to devise prompt 
 methods and means of relief. 
 
 What shall be done ? 1. It is proposed by the Committee to 
 call upon Boston gentlemen and ladies of known means to 
 contribute liberally in money ; but, as it will be impossible 
 to call upon many who ought to aid, it is respectfully urged 
 that those not asked send their names and subscriptions to 
 the Treasurer of the Committee. 
 
 2. It is earnestly recommended, not only that the other 
 cities of Massachusetts, but more especially the other great 
 cities of the country, appoint committees to take similar steps 
 for prompt co-operative aid. 
 
 3. We are confident that Western cities, like Cincinnati, De- 
 troit, Chicago, and St. Louis, if the necessary organizing steps 
 are taken, will contribute freely in money, or in corn, flour, 
 and pork ; and that the railroads will aid gladly in the work of 
 transportation. Good men and true, in their boards of trade 
 and corn exchanges, will surely be found to give cheerful help. 
 Within a year, corn has been burned for fuel in towns of the 
 West lying upon railroads ; and now corn placed on ship-board 
 will soon be saving human life. 
 
 Finally, let every one help according to his means, and his 
 bread shall come back to him and his country after many 
 days. 
 
 It is desired that co-operative committees for collecting 
 subsci'iptions and supplies be formed in the other large cities 
 and-t!owns' of this and other States. 
 
 Special *■ care will be taken to prevent any loss or abuse of 
 contributions. If need be, responsible men will go out, with- 
 out any charge whatever upon the funds contributed, to see 
 that the supplies reach only real and worthy sufferers. 
 
 Con,tributions may be sent to the Treasurer or to any of the 
 General Committee, or to the Executive Committee, at their 
 office. No. 20, Bromfield Street, Boston. 
 
 Supplies for shipment may be sent to J. M. Rodocanachi, 
 No. 30, Central Wharf. 
 
 SAMUEL G. HOWE, President 
 JOHN A. ANDREW, Vice-President. 
 AMOS A. LAWRENCE, Treasurer. 
 HERMANN J. AVARNER, } e , • 
 HORATIO WOODMAN, ^ Secretaries. 
 
6 
 
 GENERAL COMMITTEE. 
 
 William R. Alger. 
 (jEorgk W. Bond. 
 Nathaniel G. Chapin. 
 William Claflin. 
 John Codman. 
 
 eJoiiN H. Clifford, New Bedford. 
 
 A. Crocker, Fitchburg. 
 
 Charles A. Cummings. 
 
 Richard II. Dana, Jr. 
 
 Charles W. Dabney. 
 
 Henry G. Denny. 
 
 James A. Dupee. 
 
 J. AViLEY Edmands. 
 
 Samuel Eliot. 
 
 John M. Forbes. 
 
 Albert Fearing. 
 
 Thomas Gaffield. 
 
 Thomas Groom. 
 
 Charles E. Guild. 
 
 EsTES Howe. 
 
 Edward E. Hale. 
 
 Robert W. Hooper. 
 
 Frederic D. Huntington. 
 
 Edward W. Kinsley. 
 
 Henry P. Kidder. 
 
 D. Waldo Lincoln, Worcester. 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 Amos A. Lawrence. 
 
 Charles G. Loring. 
 
 George W. Messinger. 
 
 R. M. Morse, Jr. 
 
 Henry L. Pierce. 
 
 Edward N. Perkins. 
 
 AVendell Phillips. 
 
 Avery Plumer. 
 
 W, P. Phillips, Salem. 
 
 Geo. C. Richardson, Lowell. 
 
 Royal E. Robbins. 
 
 J. M. Rodocanaciii. 
 
 AVarren Sawyer. 
 
 George C. Shattuck. 
 
 Ben.jamin F. Stevens. 
 
 Charles F. Shimmin. 
 
 James Sturgis. 
 
 Christopher T. Thayer. 
 
 Samuel H. AValley. 
 
 Stephen M. AVeld. 
 
 G. AValker, Springfield. 
 
 The following letter is from our United-States consul in 
 Candia, whose high character is well known in Boston : — 
 
 The Eastern War. — An Appeal for the Suffering Cre- 
 tans. — United-States Consulate, Canea. 
 
 To the Editor of " The New- York Times^ — Will you permit 
 me to make, through your columns, an appeal to the American 
 people in behalf of the Cretan families reduced to destitution 
 and suffering by the destruction of their crops and villages 
 in consequence of the pending hostilities ? 
 
 Thousands of them, self-exiled to the nearest Greek islands, 
 are without employment or provisions for the winter; and 
 those who remain of the women and children seek to join the 
 more fortunate refugees. 
 
 If the world's charity is not large to these unfortunates, 
 there will be such suffering as has not been known in this 
 part of the world since the Greek Revolution, when American 
 charity saved the lives of thousands of Cretans, and won 
 blessings which are still clinging to our nation. 
 
7 x 
 
 What we want is, not arms or material to strengthen the 
 insurgents, but bread to keep women and children from perish- 
 ing. Will not the charitable organize some effort to keep our 
 Christian poor from starvation ? The Greeks are doing all 
 they can ; but the sufferers are many, and the Greek nation 
 poor. 
 
 Contributions might be sent by any Levant-bound ship to 
 Syra, care of the United-States Consular-General, Em. Sapun- 
 zacki ; but what would be worthier of us would be to send a 
 ship freighted for these unfortunates. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 W. J. STILLMAN, 
 
 U. S. Consul, Canea, Island of Crete. 
 
 The following eloquent speeches of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, 
 Rev. Dr. Huntington, and Mr. Wendell Phillips, were made at 
 a public meeting in Boston on the evening of Jan. 7, 1867. 
 Dr. Kirk was unable to be present; but we print his written 
 speech. 
 
 REMARKS OF DR. HOWE. 
 
 Fellow-citizens and Friends, — History repeats herself 
 wonderfully, even within the lifetime of one man. Excuse 
 me, therefore, if, in illustration of the object of our meeting, I 
 allude oftener to my own experience than good taste warrants. 
 Forty -five years ago, the world was startled by the news that 
 the Greeks, who had been enslaved four centuries, had re- 
 volted, driven out their Turkish oppressors, gained great 
 successes, and that the revolt promised to become a revolu- 
 tion. The Turks, taken at first by surprise, and driven out of 
 the country, returned with vast armies ; and the struggle 
 was renewed. 
 
 This country was deeply interested, and even painfully 
 agitated ; and people looked with anxiety for news by every 
 
8 
 
 packet. The odds were fearfully against the Greeks; and we 
 received frequent news of their overthrow and of their sub- 
 mission, as we now do about the Cretans. All people, at home 
 and abroad, Avho sympathized with despotism, said these 
 reports must be true ; while all who sympathized with free- 
 dom hoped they might be false. We were frequently told 
 that the Greeks had been routed, scattered, massacred, and 
 exterminated. They were declared to be crushed out," as 
 often as our old friends the abolitionists were ; but somehow 
 they kept rising up again. I therefore resolved to go and 
 learn the truth, and to lend a helping hand if there were yet 
 time. 
 
 Everybody whom I met on the way said it was no use to 
 go on ; that it was all over with the Greeks ; and that the 
 Turks were burying the bodies of the slain, just as they are 
 said to be doing now in Crete. 
 
 When at last I dropped from an Austrian vessel upon the 
 coast of Maina, near old Sparta, I found that the Greeks — 
 
 within a narrower ring, beset, comprest, hopeless, not heart- 
 less — strove and struggled yet." It was a war to the knife ; 
 a war without quarter, without mercy, — even to women and 
 children. V(b victis ! 
 
 Byron had just died ; and many foreigners who had come 
 to help the cause w^ere going away discouraged. 
 
 But the Greeks were united and resolute, without thought 
 of surrender, or even of compromise. There was not a cop- 
 perhead among them. 
 
 They struggled on another year, when the armies of the 
 Sultan became so much reduced, and his resources so ex- 
 hausted, that he was obliged to do exactly as he has done in 
 the struggle with the Cretans. 
 
 He called upon the Pacha of Egypt, his nominal satrap, who 
 sent a large and disciplined army and a powerful fleet. The 
 Greeks could not cope with these disciplined troops ; but they 
 would not submit, and, retreating to the mountains, carried 
 on a guerilla war with the invaders, pouncing down upon 
 their flanks, and harassing them in every possible way. 
 
 The Egyptians did exactly as they have been doing lately 
 in Crete. They overran all the open country, and burnt the 
 
9 
 
 towns aud villages, literally razing the buildings to the ground. 
 They cut down the groves of orange, olive, and lemon ; and 
 they tore up the vines; thus not only killing every living 
 thing, but trying to prevent any thing from growing. By this 
 process, the Greeks were in danger of being utterly starved 
 out. 
 
 During that dark and dreadful period, I saw thousands and 
 thousands of women and children who had fled to the moun- 
 tains, seeking shelter in the caverns, under the lee of rocks, 
 under rude tents, sheltered anyliow, and living on roots, 
 sorrel, snails, dogs, donkeys, — any thing that could be found. 
 
 I could then digest a donkey's leg better than I can now 
 digest a chicken's wing. So I could stand it pretty well, and 
 so could other young men ; but the women and children suf- 
 fered dreadfully from cold, exposure, and hunger, aggravated 
 by fear and by despair, — just as the women and children of 
 the Cretans are now suffering. 
 
 It became manifest, however, that even snails and sorrel 
 and dogs and cats would be soon exhausted ; and that, if 
 Greece was to be saved, it must be by help from abroad. 
 Soon help was coming in from Europe, and a little from the 
 United States, but not enough : so I came home, and told 
 the tale. The result was the raising of a very large sum of 
 money, and the sending-out several cargoes of food and cloth- 
 ing. I went back in one of the ships, and attended to the 
 distribution personally. 
 
 Knowing the whole coast, I took lighters and boats to vari- 
 ous points ; and people flocked down by thousands from their 
 hiding-places in the mountains to get their share : they came 
 haggard and weak and foot-sore and half naked. They ate 
 and drank, and put on the clothes, and wended their way back, 
 carrying flour and corn in bags, and garments for their little 
 ones in bundles, and joy and hope in their hearts. Their 
 appearance was grotesque enough. They hardly knew how 
 to put on the strange garments ; and, besides, the tender 
 hearts of our women had led them to make a score of chil- 
 dren's petticoats and shirts to one garment for a grown per- 
 son. So the Greek women would take three or four of these, 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 and make for themyelves one garment, without much regard 
 to color or pattern. 
 
 But the effect was marxtellous : not only were thousands fed 
 and clad, but the report tliereof went abroad, and was mag- 
 nified an hundred-fold; and men said, "Courage; hold on to 
 your arms; help is at hand! Far-off republican America is 
 coming to our aid ! " And they held on. 
 
 As, in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the godlike vir- 
 tue of Him who brake the bread gave to it power to fill the 
 multitude ; so the love and good will of the American people 
 filled the hearts of the Greeks with courage and hope. 
 
 They held out two years more ; and I hesitate not to say — 
 for I was there all the time to see, and had become as one of 
 them — that the American supplies did more than any one 
 thing to keep up the courage of the people, and lengthen out 
 their struggle for independence. 
 
 At the end of two years, the Christian world had become so 
 shocked by the persistence of a semi-barbarous Mahometan 
 power to subjugate a Christian people even in Europe, that 
 the governments of France, England, and Russia were forced 
 to send a large fleet to the scene of warfare, and to insist 
 on a pacification. 
 
 An accident brought on the great sea-fight at Navarino, 
 and the utter destruction of the Egyptian and Turkish fleet. 
 
 That unexpected and " untoward event," as it is called by 
 a British cabinet minister, assured and secured the independ- 
 ence of Greece, at least so far as the Mahometans were con- 
 cerned, because it left the Greeks masters at sea. No more 
 troops could come from Egypt. None could come from Turkey 
 by land ; for we held the passes, and the Isthmus of Corinth. 
 As for the Turkish armies in Greece, they would have soon 
 been starved ; for they themselves had utterly destroyed all 
 sources of supply. 
 
 But the Allied Powers would not let slip the opportunity 
 which the untoward event " at Navarino gave them to crush 
 out the republican institutions which the Greeks had estab- 
 lished. So they put a Bavarian prince upon a throne ; and a 
 French army came to support him, as they afterwards at- 
 tempted to support a sprig of royalty in Mexico. 
 
11 
 
 Then they proceeded to arrange the boundaries, and shocked 
 all Greece when they declared that Crete should be left out 
 of the new kingdom, and given over to the Turks. 
 
 The Cretans had been a long time in revolt. They had 
 taken and they held one of the strongest fortifications. The 
 inhabitants had indeed abandoned much of the open country, 
 and retreated to the mountain-range of the interior, where 
 the brave Sphakiotes maintained their independence, and 
 kept the flag of Grreece flying. 
 
 The Cretans everywhere shared the dangers and the strug- 
 gles of the other Greeks, and were distinguished for patriot- 
 ism and good sense. 
 
 I knew hundreds of them, — good men and true. I had 
 been in their beautiful island, and stood a siege with them in 
 one of their beleaguered fortresses, and witnessed their cour- 
 age. I knew that the independence of Crete was just as well 
 assured by the result at Navarino as that of any part of 
 Greece. Giving up the Cretans, therefore, to the Turks, 
 seemed to me then as unrighteous and cruel as seems now the 
 proposal to give up the negroes who fouglit with us and for 
 us to the dominion of their old masters, without even a ballot- 
 box for defence. 
 
 But Greece was forced to disarm : she was utterly at the 
 mercy of the Allied Powers ; and Crete was given over, bound 
 hand and foot, to her enemies and her old oppressors. 
 
 The Cretans have suffered ever since all the indignities and 
 wrongs and barbarous oppression which Christian subjects of 
 Turkey always suff'er when they live so remote from the cap- 
 ital that even the little protection which the Porte affords 
 cannot reach them. At last they have revolted, and have 
 maintained a struggle at fearful odds, but gallantly and suc- 
 cessfully, for several months. 
 
 They have been driven at last from the open country ; their 
 towns have been destroj^ed, their villages burned, their fields 
 ravaged, their olive-groves and vineyards cut down or pulled 
 up : and so it is the old story over again. I see them now, 
 the sons of my old companions, in their snowy camise and 
 their shaggy capotes, saying sadly, " Good-by, mother ! good- 
 by, sister and child ! Seek your refuge in the neighboring isles, 
 
12 
 
 upon the main, wherever the hand of Christian mercy may 
 aid you : we go to the mountains, to keep the flag of freedom 
 flying so long as we live," 
 
 My friends, these unfortunate women and children are now 
 suffering as many of their mothers suffered forty years ago. 
 
 Your fathers and your mothers relieved them : will you not 
 relieve their children ? 
 
 My friends, this is not a mere struggle between a few 
 islanders and their oppressors ; for, though it is no fault of 
 the Cretans, their island has become the field for the last fight 
 between Greece and Turkey, between Christianity and Ma- 
 hometanism, between freedom and despotism, in the Levant. 
 Diplomacy says we may not interfere as a nation ; but hu- 
 manity says we ought to interfere as men and women, and 
 at least feed the hungry and clothe the naked. 
 
 REMARKS OF REV. DR. KIRK. 
 
 Felloiv-citizens, — It is the cry of distress that brings us 
 here together to-night. To disregard that cry would show us 
 to be inhuman. But we hear more than that in the accounts 
 and appeals which have come to us from that outpost of classic 
 Greece. We hear the surging of that mighty tidal wave 
 which is rolling over the moral world, — a wave whose impulse, 
 like the tides of ocean, comes from the powers above. States- 
 men and captains may figure largely in the recent and present 
 agitations of America and Europe ; but they neither originate 
 nor regulate these mighty movements. 
 
 European statesmen trace the agitations that are perpetu- 
 ally disturbing their delicate balance of power to Washington 
 and St. Petersburg. This is shallow. What cabinet at Wash- 
 ington could ever have induced one million freemen of the 
 North to sever every tie of life, and subject themselves to the 
 tyranny and the sacrifice of military life, until they should see 
 
13 
 
 the hideous idol of the South — the Juggernaut of America — 
 lie headless, dethroned, and abandoned in the dust, and the 
 banner of freedom waving unchallenged over every foot of 
 his usurped dominions ? No, brethren ; the world is moving 
 onward ; the kingdom is coming ; the Spirit that brooded over 
 ancient chaos has now spread his wings over the moral chaos 
 of a half-regenerated world. Under the breath of his Creator, 
 man is awakening to a new conception of his rights, his ca- 
 pacities, and his destiny. That explains the Cretan insurrec- 
 tion, as well as many other movements that are now disturb- 
 ing the repose of men holding power. 
 
 We are assembled to aid each other in the contemplation of 
 one section of the vast battle-field to which the battle of Bun- 
 ker Hill has now been transferred, — might against right, bar- 
 barism against civilization, the many against the few, Maho- 
 met against Christ. The main issues are still and ever the same 
 in every age, while each period and place has its peculiar 
 phases and features. The question, then, brought home to 
 each of us by the present occasion, is this : How does the 
 scene affect me ? Have I a heart, a human heart, a Christ-like 
 heart? Are my sympathies with Islam or with Jesus, the 
 brutal Turk or the offspring of classic Greece, now baptized 
 in Jesus' name? When the famine invaded that land, we 
 flew to their relief. Now the cry is not merely nor mainly for 
 bread : it is for liberty like our own, for their Christian altars, 
 for their very lives. No, not their lives : them they are sur- 
 rendering freely. When the venerable Gabriel, head of the 
 renowned Monastery of Arkadi, surrounded by a hundred and 
 seventy fighting men, and more than three hundred women 
 and children, had defended his monastery for two days with 
 great bravery against sixteen thousand Turks, rather than sur- 
 render to such an enemy, with the consent of all, he apph'ed 
 the match to the magazine, and buried himself, his friends, 
 and their foes, in a common grave. 
 
 No, it is not for their lives they are now begging at our 
 doors. With a heroism never surpassed, they have consecrat- 
 ed the life of every man capable of bearing arms to their 
 country's deliverance. They ask not that we should interfere 
 in the fight, or shield them in battle, or even save them from 
 
the brutal scimetar that murders prisoners of war. This is 
 their simple request: having sent away their wives and chil- 
 dren, whom the Turkish soldier first subjects to every degra- 
 dation, and then slaughters, they ask us to save those loved 
 ones from starvation, while they make their own bodies a ram- 
 part around their dwellings ; that, if possible, their children may 
 yet live in that beloved island-home, free from the oppression 
 that has ground them to the dust. We must heed their cry ; 
 for they are men, suffering men, oppressed and outraged. 
 They are mainly Greeks, long lost to the world tlirough the 
 crushing power of Turkish provincial despotism. They are 
 a Christian race, crying, like Israel in Egypt, to God and to 
 man ; for the burden has now become intolerable. They are 
 a Christian race : and yet the mighty Christian powers of 
 Europe have combined to deliver them over to the tender 
 mercies of an organized banditti, to thieves and murderers ; 
 for such, by its very structure, is the provincial department 
 of the Turkish Government. The only power the Sublime 
 Porte leaves to itself is that of enforcing the tyrannical require- 
 ments and the cruel extortions of its pachas. And, to com- 
 plete the misery of our brethren, the leading presses of Europe 
 lend their prodigious influence to keep the Christian world 
 satisfied with this state of things. 
 
 But we must act with discretion as well as zeal. In the 
 flush of our excited sympathies, we meet a question that com- 
 mands our respectful attention : Have you a right to help them ? 
 Here is a rebellion against an established government. Is 
 not our interference in direct disregard of Washington's coun- 
 sel against intervention, and meddling with the political affairs 
 of other nations ? Is not this just what we so much censured in 
 Englishmen during our recent struggle ? I first reply b}^ stat- 
 ing what ground we do not take. It is true, the doctrine of 
 non-intervention, as interpreted by European practice, is a 
 nose of wax ; it is true that this very government of Turkey 
 over Crete is a most detestable specimen of intervention, an 
 abominable sacrifice of the weak to the interests of the strong, 
 a barbarous power established by Christian governments over 
 a Christian people ; it is true that we regard the whole sys- 
 tem called the balance of power "as an outrage and disgrace 
 
15 
 
 to the age in which we live. But we vindicate our course by 
 none of these considerations. We acknowledge that the law 
 of nations requires a political recognition of every de facto 
 goverument, without a moral scrutiny into its origin. Some 
 might say, ''Let us follow our generous impulses, and leave to 
 the Government the task of checking us if we go too far." 
 But that is not American. We leave that policy to the builders 
 of " The Alabama " and the blockade-runners. We are not un- 
 der masters and spies: we control the Government; instructing 
 our legislators, forming the public sentiment that guides their 
 action. Our business is to keep the Government right, rather 
 than tempt it to connive at wrong. That is the theory of re- 
 publican politics. 
 
 In assembling to-night, we are indeed indirectly aiding the 
 insurrection by furnishing the insurgents the moral aid of sym- 
 pathy, and by diminishing that solicitude for their exiled fam- 
 ihes, which would so far enfeeble them as fighting men. But 
 there are rights of neutral nations as well as of belligerents ; 
 and, in the legitimate exercise of those rights, we are assem- 
 bled to-night. The moral purpose of this meeting is legiti- 
 mate. We are assembled to enter our protest, and offer our 
 remonstrance, before the civilized world, against the original 
 act which dismembered and denationalized Greece, and placed 
 the Cretans under this terrible despotism. It may be too late 
 to undo what has been done, but not too late to form a public 
 conscience which even selfish diplomatists must respect. The 
 sufferings of this unhappy people, trodden under the iron 
 heels of merciless satraps, are the necessary and foreseen con- 
 sequences of the arrangements made by the Allied Powers 
 after the Greek Revolution. In making this protest, we are vi- 
 olating no article in that venerable code, the law of nations. We 
 are assembled to express to each other and the world, and 
 especially to our suffering brethren, our deep fraternal sym- 
 pathy with them in their protracted misery, and also in their 
 fervent desires and heroic efforts to cast off the vile bondage 
 to which they have been subjected by the selfish policy of 
 stronger nations. 
 
 But we are going farther, — to furnish substantial aid ; not 
 any thing, however, contraband of war. We send no arms to 
 
16 
 
 Crete, but food to Greece ; no succor to the army, but bread 
 to famishing women and cliildren in another country than that 
 which is the seat of war. The Supreme Court of the United 
 States determined, in the case of "The Commercen,"* that pro- 
 visions destined for the ordinary use of life, even in the enemy's 
 country, were not contraband. But we go farther than this, 
 and maintain that Turkey has placed herself outside the pale 
 of civilized nations ; and she has no more right to appeal to 
 the international law to which they mutually submit than the 
 Southern rebels have to plead the doctrines of that Constitu- 
 tion which they cast to the winds, disregarding its every re- 
 quirement for themselves, and endeavoring to bind us by its 
 restrictions. 
 
 There is one light in which it is painful to us to take this 
 ground. There are Turkish gentlemen. We have a repre- 
 sentative at the court of the Mussulman, and his government 
 is represented in Washington ; but we must nevertheless in- 
 sist on the facts, which they cannot deny. However civilized 
 and cultivated the Sultan and his courtiers may be, their very 
 system of provincial government is an organized system of 
 oppression, violence, and robbery. The very doctrines of 
 their Koran, and of their leader Mahomet, make them unfit to 
 govern Christian races. He taught them that heretics have 
 no right to live ; and their inference from the doctrine is, 
 that any thing short of death is unmerited mercy. We cannot 
 admit, that, in dealing with such a people, we are bound by the 
 laws that regulate the intercourse of Christian nations. We 
 draw, then, this line of distinction. In matters purely politi- 
 cal, in foreign Christian nations, we have no right to go beyond 
 the expression of opinion ; but, with moral questions, we are 
 bound as Christians to concern ourselves, and to act as well as 
 speak, whether they arise in our own or foreign countries. 
 And with barbarism and brutality we have a right to contend, 
 wherever in God's dominion they are found. And, as to this 
 Turkish rule in Crete, even the British Government has been 
 constrained, it is said, to propose a Christian governor for this 
 
 * 1 Wheaton, 382, as quoted in Kent's Com. i. 140. 
 
17 
 
 outraged people, as she has discovered that a pacha's rule is 
 not a government. 
 
 This war is not a civilized war, but a war of savages. To 
 such an extent is this true, that the foreign consuls have threat- 
 ened to resign their posts if it continues to be, what they de- 
 nominate, " a war of wild beasts;" women and children, and 
 prisoners of war, being uniformly massacred by the conquering 
 Turks. 
 
 REMARKS OF REY. DR. HUNTINGTON. 
 
 3Ir. President, — Apart from the duty and the privilege 
 presented to us of affording relief to the hunger and home- 
 lessness of some hundreds or thousands of sufferers by bodily 
 destitution, an opportunity is here set open, which has another 
 kind, if not a higher degree, of dignity. It is more than proba- 
 ble, that, in ministering to the persons of these poor islanders, 
 we are at the same time doing something to succor a national 
 life, and are helping to build up, out of ready materials, a king- 
 dom of free men. Would it be strange, if in the mind of 
 Americans, whose own national life may be said to have been 
 born of an instinct for independence, this of itself should prove 
 to be a motive of commanding power for prompt and munifi- 
 cent liberality ? The real problem in Crete appears to be the 
 liberating of a large and thriving though insular population, 
 to be formed ultimately into a component element in the con- 
 stitution of a future Greek empire or repubhc, commensurate 
 with the capacities and traditions of that remarkable race. 
 As must be well known to many in this assembly, the Greek 
 people have retained through all these centuries of political 
 change many of their best characteristics. They are intelli- 
 gent ; they are proverbially brave ; their love of liberty is a 
 passion, — a passion profound as the philosophy that Plato 
 taught them, and ardent as their blood. Of their intellectual 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 superiority, it is quite true that its modern manifestations are 
 not in the same proportion, or on the same scale, or in the 
 same lines of inventive and original thought, as in the days 
 of Pericles, or of the great orators, epic and tragic poets, ar- 
 tists, and statesmen, that went before and came after him. 
 Doubtless the light has been partly dimmed, and the vigor has 
 been partly depressed, under these ages of external disability 
 and disadvantage. Who can wonder at that? But there are 
 other forms of mental energy and activity besides the distinc- 
 tive accomplishments of scholarship and jurisprudence and 
 the creations of the elegant arts. Even these are not by any 
 means wholly wanting among the better classes of the descend- 
 ants of those great masters living in our own day. In the 
 cultivation of language, in the sciences, and, what is a great 
 deal better, in a liberal and comprehensive appreciation of the 
 benefits of a general diffusion of knowledge, with plans of 
 popular education, Athens is even now the centre of a vast in- 
 fluence; having, in fact, not many peers among the cities of the 
 Old World or the New. There are twice as many students 
 now at Athens as at Cambridge. The press, the ballot, the 
 judicial tribunals with trial by jury, are free. No mistake can 
 be greater than to suppose, that, in that "garden of great intel- 
 lects," — borrowing a phrase even more descriptive of the 
 place than of the British Oxford, to which its author applied 
 it, — the ruins of ancient grandeur are the only attraction. I 
 remember perfectly the fresh enthusiasm with which the la- 
 mented President Felton — whose earnest voice and genial 
 face would certainly be heard and seen in the chief place 
 among us here to-night if Providence had spared him to 
 learning and to the multitude of friends that loved him — 
 used always to describe the ripe culture and advanced cur- 
 riculum of studies in the Athenian National University, often 
 reading letters from his correspondents in the several chairs 
 in proof of both ; and it was the opinion, I believe, of one of 
 the most observing and competent of our New-England trav- 
 ellers abroad, not long ago deceased, — Mr. George Sumner, — 
 after an examination on the spot, that the present public edu- 
 cational system of Greece takes rank with the very foremost 
 in the world. 
 
19 
 
 But it is not merely, as I was just observing, in fashions of 
 eminence distinctively literary, that the intellect of the modern 
 Greeks discovers its quickness and power. Sail from one sea- 
 port to another along all the north-eastern and eastern shores 
 of the Mediterranean, with the Archipelago, the Dardanelles, 
 and the Bosphorus ; travel from Trieste to Alexandria ; and, 
 wherever you find Greek commerce or traffic, you find not 
 only a business forecast and shrewdness that are a match for 
 the liveliest wits of the West, but, in many instances, remarka- 
 ble powers of combination and generalization, such as make 
 up everywhere the master-merchant as distinguished from the 
 ordinary trader. I suppose there are gentlemen in this hall 
 that have had commercial transactions in those waters, who 
 would say, that, all over the Levant, the ablest bankers, capi- 
 talists, and leaders of enterprise, are of that sagacious, ver- 
 satile, penetrating nation ; that the best thinking in the East 
 is done by Greek heads ; and, in short, that, of South-eastern 
 Europe and Western Asia, Greece is the brain. 
 
 Now, when you add to this trait a courage that is unsur- 
 passed in the annals of heroism, illustrated in these recent en- 
 gagements and defences in Crete, and a love of liberty, that, 
 while it is inborn and inbred, yet evidently holds life itself 
 cheap as the price of that liberty, it surely becomes conceiva- 
 ble, that by and by, out of these thoughtful and patriotic and 
 progressive communities, scattered here and there in all the 
 principal seats of population, a rallying-cry will be heard, a 
 stronger movement of union and organization will take place ; 
 and so, when the sick man " dies, Europe may witness the 
 establishment there of a great Christian commonwealth. It 
 may miscarry ; it may be postponed ; it may fail altogether ; 
 this spirited uprising in Crete to throw off the Moslem des- 
 , potism may contribute nothing to it ; it may be crushed : but 
 there are minds in that part of the world, Italy included, to 
 which the insurrection means nothing less. And it is for us 
 to say whether it is either magnanimous or manly to let the 
 chances of success weigh much in the giving or withholding 
 of our sympathy. The Greek Cretans are worth saving to 
 freedom. There is something very touching and very affect- 
 ing in the attitude of a struggling and honorable cause im- 
 
20 
 
 ploring kindness from an older and stronger and prosperous 
 sister, that has been a winner in the battle of human rights. 
 Have we fought that battle out twice, Mr. President, for our- 
 selves only, or in part also for the world, and for our kindred, 
 in whatever continent or corner of it, who ask and need our 
 help? 
 
 To me, I confess, there is a pecuh'ar promise in the signs of 
 this Hellenic revolution or consolidation, because it seems to 
 hold in it the principles of a sound and legitimate civilization. 
 It is indigenous ; it strikes its roots in a native soil ; it rises 
 on the Past, and that not a dead Past burying its dead, but a 
 Past that survives and lives in the life of to-day. I believe 
 that is a portion of the philosophy of a genuine national devel- 
 opment. It must be part and parcel with all elements of cli- 
 mate, geography, memory, hope, experience, association, wor- 
 ship, on the soil. It is a growth, not a fabrication ; an organic 
 life, not a mechanism. The very juices of the ground, the 
 shadows of the hills, the music of the streams or the ocean, 
 the restlessness of the winds, go into it. No matter if Greece 
 seemed to die, and to be living, Greece no more : it comes to 
 life again. In the wonderful language of that land of beauty, 
 there is a singularly beautiful verb, which signifies, in a single 
 term, the putting-forth of new verdure in a thing, like the 
 green leaves on the branches of a tree in spring after the dry- 
 ness and bareness of winter. St. Paul uses it to praise the 
 reviving charity of the Christians at Philippi. It must be the 
 hope and the prayer, I think, of every true republican heart 
 in these States, that the sense of that figure may be realized, 
 and that the powers and liberties of those oppressed and 
 martyred patriots may put out bud and leaf, and flower and 
 fruit, and flourish again. 
 
 In the comparison of the two contending parties, there can . 
 be no room for hesitation. In spite of his monotheism, the 
 Turk is essentially a barbarian. The softening, refining, ele- 
 vating, and expansive influences of the catholic spirit of 
 Christianity have not reached him: he rejects them. The 
 sword is the symbol of his religion, the instrument of his 
 statesmanship, and, I may say, the delight of his despotism. 
 Can it be wondered at, if, in this stout-hearted little island, he 
 
21 
 
 starves and slaughters infants and their mothers, suffocates 
 hundreds of peasants in caves, sets fire to olive-trees and vil- 
 lages, desolates the face of the earth? Doubtless it is, to 
 some extent, a war of faiths and creeds. But in that issue I 
 am sure we shall all be agreed as to which class of disciples 
 we shall first try to feed and clothe. We may pray, we can 
 pray heartily, for the Turk, that, with other wanderers, the 
 Great Shepherd would " fetch him home to his flock ; " but 
 we must stand by the lambs of that flock when he becomes 
 the wolf to ravage it. Beyond question, there are grave and 
 conspicuous moral faults in these Greeks. Temptation and 
 wrong have wrought their mischief upon them ; but they 
 have never lost the truth of revelation, and they keep the 
 grace of devotion. Ever since the apostle who understood 
 them so well, landing at the PirtBus, and bringing with him the 
 morning light of the new religion to spread it over pagan 
 Europe, pronounced them, at Mars Hill, " too superstitious," 
 or, more exactly, too indiscriminately religious, they have 
 been easy to believe. We remember, too, that it was when 
 Greeks came seeking him, and inquiring into his teachings, 
 just on the eve of his suffering, that the Saviour uttered that 
 prophetic exclamation of a closing earthly ministry, ''The 
 hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified." Nor 
 can the Christian scholar forget that it was in their musical 
 tongue that the Eastern fathers wrote ; that the eloquence of 
 Chrysostom, pleading for the poor of Antioch and Constanti- 
 nople, has resounded through Christendom; nay, that the 
 Lord and his evangelists and apostlea spoke and recorded 
 the words of life that abide forever. I notice in the news- 
 papers that the military oath of these Cretan volunteers is 
 administered by the priest ; and that each soldier, while he 
 swears to fight for the union of Crete with the kingdom of 
 Greece, vows to protect the person and property of every 
 Christian everywhere. 
 
 Of the merits and fortunes of the contest thus far, you are 
 all informed as well as despatches liable to constant hostile 
 manipulation and distortion permit. The government of the 
 Porte has levied a tax for the support of the war -on Greek 
 subjects. It boasts of " concessions," which impartial Euro- 
 
22 
 
 pean contemporaries pronounce the bitterest irony ever exhib- 
 ited by a diplomacy without bowels to a despoiled people. 
 Lord Palmerston declared in the House of Commons, nearly 
 forty years ago, that the Turks had no rightful possession in 
 Crete. I have seen statements from files of an Athenian 
 newspaper of dates as far back as last May and June, show- 
 ing, in reply to contrary assertions of the Governor-General of 
 the Ottoman Government, that the Cretans respectfully ap- 
 pealed to the head of the empire before resorting to arms. 
 The Turks took the oflensive about the last of August. A 
 few weeks ago, there were said to be twenty-five thousand in- 
 surgents acting on the defence in the mountains that intersect 
 the island. They are from all classes of the people, — mer- 
 chants, students, professors, artisans, peasants, — mostly ill clad 
 and ill armed, but of indomitable resolution, and a most de- 
 termined hope. They cite the routing of Napoleon's veterans, 
 victorious on all the battle-fields of Europe, by the peasantry 
 of Spain, with rusty muskets and clasp-knives. They do not 
 ask now for equipments or weapons of war. The General 
 Assembly in September petitioned only for steamers to carry 
 the women and children to some safe retreat. We are pro- 
 posing only to do for them, our friends, what Christ bids us do 
 for foes : ^' If thine enemy hunger, feed him." The balance 
 of European powers is too delicately adjusted to allow much 
 of even that harmless sort of benefaction through any official 
 channels. But Englishmen are already before us : they have 
 appointed a committee of relief, with a large number of the 
 nobility and members of Parliament serving upon it. 
 
 Unquestionably, it is present to the thoughts of many here, 
 who have reflected on the matter, that there may be questions 
 of international precedent, if not of obligation, involved in 
 some of its bearings, such as to raise a doubt how far we can 
 extend mercy to the Greek, and not commit a breach of comity 
 or equity with the Turk. Without enlarging much in that 
 direction, let me only say, that, to any misgivings on that score, 
 two considerations seem to suggest themselves in reply. The 
 one is, that while, in whatever action we may take here, we 
 are subject to regulation by the law of our own Government, 
 we are not acting as ofiicers of that Government, but as 
 
citizens; or rather we are not diplomatists and political rep- 
 resentatives at all, but simply men. 
 
 " Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men 
 
 and that " Nature " is God. The Government, we may pre- 
 sume, is competent to take care of its etiquette with its non- 
 intervention policy, and to take care of us if we become 
 transgressors : in other words, we shall be restrained from 
 mischief by law if we venture too much in charity. But by 
 all means, in the name of human brotherhood, let us make the 
 venture; because the second consideration is, that, around 
 the domain of legal precedent and prescription, there spreads, 
 there always has spread, and always will, a margin for the 
 large constructions and grand liberties of love. All honor to 
 " the powers that be ; " all due obedience to the law that is 
 the mother of our peace and joy : " not less, but more of 
 that, is one of the chief needs of our people. But there are 
 two codes of that law, as there were two tables of the statutes 
 at Sinai. Both are " ordained of God." The one is written 
 on our hearts as legibly as the other in the books. It would 
 be a wrong to the latter, and to Him whose authority it rep- 
 resents, if we deny or disobey the first. Till the limits be- 
 tween what nations may do and may not do for one another 
 are more clearly defined than they have been yet, we shall be 
 justified in running some noble risks for mercy's sake. How 
 preposterous to pretend that only when the elements of Nature 
 have been unkind, only when frost and drought blight the 
 harvest, only when Nature's fire devours, or floods drown, or 
 seasons disappoint, we may send the freights of our good will 
 across the sea ; but that when the cruelty is man's, when a 
 human oppressor blasts the fields, when it is a Turk's torch 
 that sets the fire, or a Turk's axe that plays the famine's part, 
 and cuts down the vineyard and the olive-garden, then we 
 must fold our hands, and keep our corn and wine and oil to 
 ourselves! God forbid! Not so reads the original and 
 blessed charter of our human compassion, older than treaties, 
 and never annulled ; and not so reads the parable of the Good 
 Samaritan, which interprets and applies that proclamation. 
 The way is perfectly open for this work of good. No right 
 
will be violated, no pledge broken, no national friendship that 
 is worth having disturbed. On the contrary, a much higher 
 friendship would be insulted, and many lofty inspirations 
 would have to be quenched, if it were refused. 
 
 Very simple, therefore, dear friends, very easy, very natural, 
 it would seem, very right and comforting both to giver and 
 receiver, will the office of your Christian charity be. Perhaps 
 it will be only the opening of a few baskets of bread for a few 
 hungry mouths. All charity is sacred; and this would be too 
 like that which sanctified the hill-sides of Galilee to be 
 despised. But perhaps it will also grow to be the reaching- 
 forth of the hand of a great nation's fellowship to another 
 nation once great, destined to be great once more, and great 
 now in most of the real attributes of greatness. Perhaps it 
 will be a generous illustration of what seems to be one of the 
 glories of our times, wrought out by a thousand humane 
 causes, — the neighborhood and even the brotherhood of 
 nations. Perhaps we shall be doing something to encourage 
 free-minded men, free in thought, free in feeling, free by the 
 legislation of Heaven, free in every thing but an accidental 
 and temporary tyranny hindering the civil regeneration that 
 would embody that freedom in institutions and laws. At least, 
 we shall assure them that freemen on this side of the Atlantic 
 remember them, and care for them, and offer them a New- 
 Year's blessing and God-speed, in the name of humanity and 
 its Father in heaven. 
 
 Hearty applause was bestowed upon the expression of Dr. 
 Huntington's sentiments and the considerations advanced in 
 his address. Wendell Phillips was then presented, and received 
 his usual indorsement by a Boston audience. He addressed 
 the meeting in the following language : — 
 
25 
 
 REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, — We are here to 
 consider the question of Cretan relief. Who are the Cre- 
 tans? and what is the question of the relief of Crete? Five 
 thousand miles off, an island not as large as our own little 
 Massachusetts has risen in arms to claim its rights : not pri- 
 marily political rights ; not, first, independence, legislation, 
 ballots ; but the right to earn bread in peace ; the right to 
 worship God in safety; the right of woman to her purity; the 
 right of the child to school and to home ; the bare human 
 rights pertaining to human nature everywhere, under all 
 circumstances, — God-given, — which no power has a right 
 under any circumstances to invade. [Applause.] This is 
 what Crete rises to claim. What method does she take to 
 claim it? I should say, in the first place, no need for us to ask. 
 How long shall a man submit to the denial of such rights? 
 My answer is. Just so long as, and up to that point where, 
 he has an honorable chance to escape from it. [Applause.] 
 The moment Nature and God put within his reach the power of 
 deliverance, it is not only his right, but it is his duty, to him- 
 self, to his children, to the world, to tear the chain off his limbs. 
 It is for him to choose whether this shall be by argument, by 
 appeal to the good sense and the good heart of his oppressor, 
 or by arms. We have no right to dictate. The choice lies 
 with the victim, knowing how much he has suffered, how much 
 he can do, and the chances that are before him; and when 
 man rises anywhere, the world over, to claim these rights, and 
 is willing to accord to others what he claims for himself, by all 
 the considerations that make human brotherhood, — one God, 
 one blood, and one future, — he may claim of his fellow-man 
 sympathy and aid. [Applause.] No form of government, no 
 parchment, however sacred, has any right to stand between 
 man and man in such emergency. 
 
 This is a mere abstract statement of the relations, as I con- 
 ceive, between a man and his fellow, the world over. But 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 what is Crete ? What is this island that sends its claim for 
 sympathy half round the globe? It is an island peopled dis- 
 tinctively by one race. That race has a common nationality. 
 No part of it has ever allowed oppression or defeat to sunder 
 that nationality. All Greece — Greece proper and all her 
 islands — for five hundred years has never left one generation 
 without a protest of arms or of argument against the denial 
 of its rights by the force of surrounding nations. Like its 
 own legend of the giant under the sister island, Sicily, of the 
 Mediterranean, there has never been a moment when Crete or 
 the Morea has suffered in silence. Their protest, like his re- 
 sistance, has unceasingly rocked the Continent, or lashed the 
 Archipelago into storms. They may claim, that at no time, 
 within the history of man, has the consent of the Greek race 
 ever been given to the power coercing them. It is such 
 a community that comes to us protesting against the sword, 
 without one element that in our philosophy goes to make up 
 a government. Their nationality unbroken, they have sub- 
 mitted only to absolute necessity of silence when worn out by 
 struggle and bloodshed. Against what have they been 
 struggling? Against a faith, the fundamental principle of 
 which is, that every thing which dissents from it has no right 
 to live. Crete defies to-day a despotism which is but another 
 name for a faith which claims the right to exterminate every 
 thing that does not believe its own creed. It is not a pure 
 despotism like that which existed in feudal Europe and in 
 ancient times ; but it is something which calls itself a state, 
 founded on the principle that one portion of the human race 
 has no right to live. Am I sinning against American ethics, 
 against Christian ethics, when I say that a power which denies 
 the right of the Greeks even to life, has no right, in the eye 
 of God and justice, to assert its authority over races and 
 realms that have for two thousand years denied its creed? If 
 that is not justice, then one part of the human race, under the 
 mask of government, has a right to exterminate the other. 
 And yet this is the form of government against which Crete 
 has maintained her perpetual protest; and though seeming 
 peace, under the guise of vast taxes and cruel assaults on life, 
 honor, comfort, prosperity, permits to the Christian population 
 
27 
 
 the toleration oF an existence, yet the moment the sliglitest 
 arm lifted agajnst government justifies the Turk in falling back 
 upon the Koran, his war of extermination is not exceptional : 
 it is the cardinal constitution of his realm. Remember, then, 
 we friends of Greece are not asking for the sympathy of the 
 Christian and civilized world for one section of a nation con- 
 tending for political rights against another ; but we are asking, 
 for a race unalterably Christian, never divided, never fairly 
 conquered, the liberty to rise, until there is no hope in rising, 
 against a despotism concealed behind a creed which not only 
 tolerates, but orders, the extermination of man, woman, and 
 child. For one, I am ready to say, in the face of all civiliza- 
 tion, that I see no right in any Christian nation to acknowledge 
 such alliance and friendship for a power resting on such a 
 claim as will prevent any of its citizens from stretching forth 
 their hands, with any amount or quality of aid, to the victims 
 who rise up against such oppression. [Applause.] I can see 
 a reason in international law, why, if France should rise against 
 her government, or Germany against hers, bad as we think 
 them, there might be a limit beyond which expediency 
 and the law of Christendom would not permit us to 
 step. But the Turk is only encamped in Europe. He has 
 never yet, viewed in the light of the principles of justice and 
 law, advanced the first claim to recognition as an equal in the 
 sisterhood of nations. That power which undertakes to starve 
 women and children ; to deny to the victim race the right to 
 appeal to its own tribunals ; which says to the Christian, 
 " Your faith shuts you out from testifying to injury before the 
 law ; " which at the first indication of resistance exterminates a 
 population, — I contend, has no rightful existence as a gov- 
 ernment. [Applause.] Write the word Scio on the Turkish 
 record, and all Christianity and all law deny the right of such 
 a power to be recognized as a government, in the ordinary 
 European sense of that term. [Applause.] Recollect, in 
 the second year of the old conflict, which began in 1821, 
 the prosperous, fruitful, happy Island of Scio, with some 
 one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, herself quiet and 
 neutral, was visited by about two or three thousand patriots, 
 and some resistance was made to Turkish law : upon which 
 
28 
 
 the government let loose upon the island an army of some 
 fifteen or twenty thousand men ; and, in one or two months, but 
 nine hundred living human beings of that population of one 
 hundred and fifty thousand were left upon the land. Only 
 forty thousand women and children, sold into slavery, survived 
 of the whole population: the rest were butchered on their own 
 hearths. Is that what civilization considers war ? Are there 
 any rights of belligerency to be acknowledged to such a 
 power ? 
 
 In the Social Scientific Congress at Ghent, in 1863, 
 M. Clamageran, a distinguished French writer on political ques- 
 tions, speaking of the rule of acknowledging belligerents, 
 said, 'MVhat shall be tlie criterion? Hitherto it has been 
 the fact which has given birth to the right. If the insurrec- 
 tion lasts, the insurgents become belh'gerents ; that is, by the 
 fact. It is time to substitute, for this, justice and right. These 
 are the principles: First, there must be oppression, and it 
 must be manifested by the protests of the oppressed, who 
 must have exhausted pacific means. Deny this rule, and you 
 consecrate injustice and anarchy." This, I contend, should be 
 the American doctrine ; and the time will come when the law of 
 Christendom will acknowledge it. 
 
 In the light of this claim, look briefly at the history of 
 Crete. You recollect, when the Greeks rose in 1821, they 
 sustahied a nine-j^ears' conflict against the Turkish Empire, 
 assisted, as Dr. Howe has related to us, by the strength of 
 Egypt. In 1827 occurred that battle of Navarino to which 
 he has made reference. Shortly after, the Allied Powers 
 made the Porte recognize the independence of Greece as a 
 nation; but at the same time, by their own will, they under- 
 took to say to Crete, — a portion of the Greek nation since his- 
 tory began, lying right upon the coast of the Morea, neces- 
 sary to that kingdom for defence, recognized as such by 
 Palmerston himself, an island that had maintained the most 
 desperate conflict for nine years, writing the record in the 
 blood of their women and children as well as their soldiers, — 
 the Allies compelled Crete to submit again to Moslem control, 
 as an appendage to Egypt; and it was afterwards restored to 
 the Porte. Crete is no party to such oppression. In 1833, 
 
2i) 
 
 in 1842, in 1858, she made an armed resistance. In 1865, she 
 began a constiUitional resistance. Having* suffered every 
 thing humanity could suffer in her previous risings, the inhab- 
 itants assembled in legitimate council, and sent to the Porte 
 their respectful protest against the constant oppressions 
 of Mahometan law. This was right, — the only justifiable 
 course. No man is authorized in appealing to arms till he has 
 exhausted all peaceful means, if such are possible. Nothing 
 but argument will change opinion ; everywhere, even in des- 
 potisms, opinion bears sway in the last resort. Victor Hugo 
 says, The flash of the sabre is a moment's gleam : right is an 
 eternal ray." True ; but sometimes the heavens are so dark, 
 the only light we get is the sword's gleam. Barbarism bows 
 to nothing else, knows no other logic. The John Bright for 
 Turkey is the sword. Instead of answering this protest in 
 the way known to constitutional governments, the Porte let 
 loose upon the island his native and Egyptian troops, as in the 
 previous contest, and, as Dr. Howe has told us, desolated the 
 island from end to end, smothered the inhabitants in caves, and 
 murdered every thing taken prisoner, — men, women, and chil- 
 dren : no distinction of combatant and non-combatant, of age 
 or sex or profession ; every thing put to the sword. This is 
 the history of the contest up to the present moment. 
 
 Let me read to you a spirit-stirring document, — the de- 
 cree of the General Assembly of the Cretans, Sept. 2, 1866, 
 after the Turks commenced this system of extermination: — 
 
 " Faithful to the oath taken in 1821, and to the will of the 
 whole people, who desire the union and independence of the 
 entire Hellenic race, it is decreed, — 
 
 " I. The sovereignty of Turkey is forever abolished in the 
 whole territory of Crete and the places appurtenant to it. 
 
 " II. The indissoluble and eternal union of Crete and of all 
 the places appurtenant to it, under the sceptre of his Majesty 
 George I., is hereby proclaimed. 
 
 HI. The execution of the present decree is confided to 
 the valor of the generous people of Crete, to the patriotism of 
 our brother Hellenes wherever residing, and to the liberality 
 of all Philhellenes, as well as to the powerful mediation of 
 
30 
 
 the great nations protecting and guaranteeing it, and to the 
 protection of Almighty God." 
 
 This is the decree of a nation rising into existence; and it 
 comes to us as to every other people, making appeal to the 
 world for sympathy in its claim, not of political and disputed 
 rights, but of the inalienable, indisputable, and undeniable 
 rights of human nature itself. [Loud applause.] Crete does 
 not come to us asking that we will help her make a republic 
 against a constitutional monarchy, but that we will help men 
 striving to protect their natural rights to bread, worship, home, 
 education, the ordinary safety of life and hearth, against a 
 dominion which denies them all. 
 
 Why should we do it, particularly in this case ? For one, I 
 feel especially drawn to this population, because of the ex- 
 ceeding vitality of the blood which it represents. No matter 
 how many races, either as conquerors or as emigrants, have 
 taken up their abode in the Morea or on the islands; no matter 
 what language or custom they have carried there : every thing 
 has been absorbed and converted into Grecian, under the 
 overwhelming power and vitality of the Greek blood. Like 
 the Saxon in England and the Saxon here, no matter what 
 race, no matter what language, no matter what custom, enters 
 our limits, Normans, Celts, Latins, all are absorbed and 
 digested into a nation whose normal character and law are 
 still Saxon. The Chinese exhibit the same wonderful 
 pertinacity of life. No matter what wave of conquest rolls 
 over them in their history of centuries, re-appearing above 
 the subsiding deluge comes ever uppermost the unchangeable 
 form of the original Chinese blood and civilization. Now, by 
 virtue of the right God has given to what is lasting amid 
 human changes, such races have a right to live. [Applause.] 
 Every thing disappears before them, because God has given 
 them the inherent forces which make them a power, and would 
 make them a blessing, in the world. The world owes a recog- 
 nition to Greece. Greece, since the first page of history, no 
 matter what her changes, has never ceased to be Greece. 
 That is one claim. Secondly, she has another claim upon us, 
 that, in every little privilege which events have accorded her, 
 she has shown a wonderful recuperative power against all 
 
31 
 
 previous oppression. / I recognize well that rule which I think 
 covers all cases of oppressor and his victim ; that though it 
 may be true, as Homer said, 
 
 " Whatever day 
 Makes man a slave takes half his worth away," 
 
 it is still more true, that whatever day makes man a tyrant 
 takes all his worth away. [Applause.] Oppression does 
 more harm to the oppressor than to its victim. That is the 
 reason why, with all his faults of necessity and circumstance, 
 the Greek, rising from these centuries of oppression, is still 
 infinitely better than the Turk, w^ho, by others' help, has been 
 able to domineer over him. In every scale that weighs the 
 character of their culture and civilization, there is no pretence 
 even of comparison. True, the Greek has his faults. Men 
 say he is cunning. But cunning is always the only defence of, 
 the weak against the strong. The strong man, like the strong 
 brute, defends himself by force ; and the weaker man, like the 
 weaker animal, defends himself by the keenness of his cun- 
 ning. The very oppression that robs men of the power to re- 
 sist develops in the victim race this part of its intellect ; but, 
 in spite of that, the Greek has shown, in the prosperity that 
 he has reaped since his independence, in the increase of pop- 
 ulation, in the great increase of wealth, in his accumulation of 
 culture, in his schools and universities, that, only free him 
 from the superincumbent weight, he will yet give us the 
 eastern half of the Mediterranean back to civilization. In my 
 view, the Greek is the Ne^v-Englander of the East. Men call 
 him idle ; but he has only been indolent when there was no 
 security for the fruits of his industry. He is like ourselves 
 in his characteristics. He wishes to toil with his brains, and 
 not to be obliged to resort to the manual drudgery of 
 his hands. The Yankee race skulks the primeval curse 
 [laughter] ; seeks to get its living without the sweat of its 
 brow. It harnesses steam, and sends the lightning on errands. 
 It invents. It undertakes to make man superior to the ele- 
 ments by the vigor of his intellect. The Greek does the 
 same. Give him freedom, and he runs the same race. But 
 that New-England race would have fought for the right to in- 
 vent before they would have submitted to a continued exist- 
 
32 
 
 ence of manual toil. [Applause.] The Greek, under his 
 previous form of national life, has never had the freedom of 
 development wliich we have enjoyed. Give to the Greek 
 kingdom, the Greek race, on the soil which originally be- 
 longed to them, the opportunities and the liberty of develop- 
 ment which we have had, and they will come nearer, as I read 
 them, to the New-England race, in all the characteristics of 
 their national life, "i'raders on the broadest basis, inventors 
 subjugating nature to human intellect, and not to human 
 hands, — tliis will be the character of their prosperity in the 
 future. And they claim of us, as I said, sympathy on a broader 
 basis than Italy has claimed it hitherto. After all, this great 
 uprising in Italy has been one simply for a change of political 
 masters, of political institutions. What oppressions she had 
 were incidental to these. Greece cries out to us, " Civiliza- 
 tion is figliting against barbarism ; Christianity, against that 
 intolerance which does not allow it the right to live or to 
 worship : come to my aid ! " 
 
 Well, they have chosen the happiest hour for their resist- 
 ance, the one most hopeful for its success. In the first place, 
 Turkey is but a farce. " The sick man," as Chesterfield said, 
 
 is already dead and buried, only he does not wish it known 
 among his friends." [Laughter.] Europe sustains the farce 
 of a government for some unexiDlained reasons of her diplo- 
 macy. Euj-ope handed back Crete to her masters on some 
 diplomatic grounds of the balance of power. Crete, for thirty- 
 six years, has suffered every oppression which can be visited 
 on men, women, and children ; and that is enough for her to 
 pay as penalty to the exigencies of European diplomacy. She 
 rises now to ask of Europe her rights ; and what can Europe 
 reply? Europe may say, "There are some delicate questions 
 of balance of power yet which oblige us to keep up the farce, 
 the pretended government of Turkey." How much weight 
 that ought to have on a nation claiming unity and rights like 
 the Greek, you can judge ; but America, at least, has no inter- 
 est in the balance of European politics. It is of no account 
 to us, whatever it may be to Austria, to France, to Russia, to 
 England, that this pretence and sham of a government be 
 kept up at Constantinople. In the falling-apart of that bar- 
 
33 
 
 barism, Crete claims her right, — a God-givea right. She 
 claims it of an empire that has not the power to protect, which 
 has only the power to annoy. I say America is not bound, in 
 this emergency, to pay the slightest regard to that pretence 
 of a government which nothing but European diplomacy 
 recognizes. Put aside the appearances of things. Turkey, 
 with her exhausted exchequer, her entirely decrepit right 
 hand, has no title to be considered a government. What has 
 it ever done for Crete ? What is the right by which govern- 
 ments exist? Cicero says, in one of his treatises, ^^Qu(E est 
 enim civitas? Omnis ne conventus etiam ferorum et imma- 
 nium? Omnis ne etiam fugitivorum ac latronum cougregata 
 unum in locum multitudo ? Certe negabis." — What is 
 a state ? Is every gathering of savages and barbarians such ? 
 Is every gang of fugitives and robbers a state? Certainly 
 not." 
 
 No civil society, no government, can rightfully exist except 
 on the basis of the willing submission of its citizens, and by 
 the performance of the duty of rendering equal justice be- 
 tween man and man. A state must show, in the protection of 
 its subjects, in the education of its children, in the creation 
 of great public benefits, in roads, hospitals, harbors, commerce, 
 in trade opened and protected, in the great benefits which 
 civil society is meant to subserve and extend, or at least by 
 an attempt to carry out these great human interests, her right 
 to obedience and respect. Point me to the first effort that 
 w Turkish barbarism ever made since it encamped in Constan- 
 tinople for any one of these things. Point me to one single 
 road, school, hospital, public institution, or the preservation of 
 public or private right in the island which it undertakes to 
 govern, that it has ever pretended to help. Boston men, we 
 are not to be the children of words ; we are not to be duped 
 by appearances ; and, if there is a government against which 
 these brother Christians and sons of civilization are con- 
 tending, where is it ? and what has it ever done ? Nothing 
 but murder its subjects ; nothing but steal the bread of its 
 laborers ; nothing but cripple the development of its popu- 
 lation ; nothing but hamper commerce ; nothing but gag 
 speech and crush conscience ; nothing but destroy every 
 
34 
 
 element which makes civih'zation. If there is any thing 
 in the history and attitude of this country, or in the elements 
 which go to make up this government, we have a right to 
 deny to such a government a place in the sisterhood of states. 
 This is the ground on which I, for one, am willing to rest, and 
 urge on this nation as a nation, and on us as individuals, the 
 duty to help a struggling and undisputed nationality against 
 a power which Europe has maintained only for her own self- 
 ish purposes. [Applause.] 
 
 T know very well, Mr. Chairman, that delicacy of inter- 
 national law which claims that this is a dangerous principle. 
 But humanity has certain great rules. The brotherhood of 
 man means something. It is not a phrase ; and, if the brother- 
 hood of man means any thing, then I say, that, when a state 
 undertakes to treat its subjects as the Porte has treated the 
 Christians for centuries, any nation has a right to help them ; 
 and no Christian people have a right to maintain such relations 
 with the Porte as would prevent their helping them. I know 
 the danger of this principle ; but humanity must not surren- 
 der a right because tyrants may, under some pretence or other, 
 abuse it. [Applause.] If 3^ou deny that rule, you conse- 
 crate injustice and anarchy under the form of law. 
 
 Now, considering the weakness of Turkey, considering that 
 paralysis of the European States which exists at this moment, 
 — that paralysis of France, England, Russia, Austria, which 
 gave to Germany its splendid and prompt success, which ex- 
 plains why Bismark in an hour has made the long splendor 
 of Napoleon fade away [applause], — that paralysis in the 
 diplomacy of Europe is the opportunity of Greece. There is 
 not a nation on the Continent that is in a condition to inter- 
 fere. Turkey is nothing; and all these boasted realms around 
 her, if they dare to put their flag behind the Crescent, risk 
 such a European conflict as will make all Europe a new map 
 within thirty years. France, anxious as she is to touch the 
 Eastern question, knows it well. The sagacious Greek knows 
 his opportunity. He has but to persevere, and he is certain 
 of success. Fortified in his mountain recesses, he cannot be 
 beaten. The island is divided by one single chain, running 
 from end to end. It is the Switzerland of the East. Who has 
 
been able, in eight hundred years, to subjugate the Swiss ? 
 It is San Domingo over again, — a race contending against 
 alien blood for their homes ; and, as Homer says, " to fight for 
 one's own home is half the battle." [Applause.] Now, these 
 Cretan men in their fortresses ask of us what ? Bread for 
 their wives and children, shelter from extermination. In 
 the recent convent fight at Arkadi, six hundred Cretans, 
 — men, women, and children, — cooped within the walls of a 
 convent, were assailed, I think, by ten thousand troops. 
 When the battle had at last broken through the outer wall, it 
 was sustained for six hours, hand to hand, in the yard of the 
 convent. When the time came finally for the decision, death 
 or submission, knowing well that out from under that Creek 
 flag no living soul would pass, they themselves applied the 
 match to the magazine, and went to heaven ; while three 
 thousand of their opponents went to their graves. [Ap, 
 plause.] A man is not obliged thus to die with wife and 
 child rather than to submit to the conditions of civilized 
 war. The Creek saw his wife and child on each side of 
 him. It was not war he was waging, when, by surrendering 
 his sword, he might be himself a prisoner, and their lives be 
 saved. He was fighting, hand to hand, with pirates, enemies 
 of the human race. The survivors, the brothers, the sons, 
 the fathers, of those men, come to us, and say, We can 
 fight ; but let us fight as civilized man fights, putting only 
 our own lives on the hazard. Do not let us fight with the 
 lives of wife and children hanging on the issue of the battle. 
 Give us shelter, as Christendom has recognized warfare for a 
 thousand years, — shelter and bread for woman and child." 
 And, with such a history as I have detailed, this is all the Cre- 
 tan asks of America. Shall he have it ? Will we do for this 
 last gallant resistance of the Greek what our fathers did for 
 the Morea ? Will we, in this better opportunity ; one so 
 likely to open the whole Levant to Christianity and civiliza- 
 tion ; one so likely to make the Turk fold up his tent like 
 the Arab, and silently glide from Europe, — will we hold up the 
 hands of civilized warfare by rendering it impossible that 
 the Turk should be a brute and a barbarian ? The black race 
 in San Domingo met from France the same edict of extermi- 
 
36 
 
 nation ; and, the moment the Frenchman issued it, he guaran- 
 teed his own defeat in the indomitable resolution to avenge 
 which filled the hearts of his opponents. The moment the 
 French sword knew no difference between man, woman, and 
 child, the island rose like one man to an effort which made 
 subjugation an impossibility. I read so the history of Crete. 
 
 Some fear to offer a new object of public sympathy, lest 
 they distract that attention our own affairs require. No 
 need of such fear. Every heart-beat in favor of liberty the 
 world over makes the brain more skilful and the hand more 
 active in dealing with treason at home. [Applause.] It is 
 not by doing too much in good causes that men weaken 
 themselv.es. It is by inaction, by a charity which begins at 
 home and ends at home, tliat the strength rusts and the heart 
 grows chill. Loyalty here lacks not means, but only a deci- 
 sive purpose. Giving free rein to our sympathy will only 
 feed tliis needed purpose. Self-sacrifice is a habit, and, like 
 all habits, grows stronger by indulgence. On the contrary, 
 by fidelity at home, we have at last won the right to offer 
 help abroad. It is because one hand has never rested in its 
 effort to resist oppression here that I feel justified in hold- 
 ing out the other to the oppressed of all lands. [Applause.] 
 For the first time since we were a nation, the people of this 
 Commonwealth may stretch out clean hands to help the 
 world. Having been " reconciled to our brother," we may 
 now offer our gift." [Loud applause.] 
 
 Greece comes to us at a moment when the loyal North has 
 proved that with one hand she could conquer rebellion, and 
 with the other fend off the world, while she marched unfail- 
 ingly onward in her ordinary pathway of duty. We have 
 enough left for this work ; and if we owe aid to any one, or 
 to any realm, we owe it to Greece. Christian civilization is a 
 threefold band. We owe to the Jew the form and structure 
 of our faith; to Goth and Saxon many precious elements and 
 safeguards of civil life : all the rest — art, literature, science, 
 law, diplomacy, and forms of government — we inherit from 
 the classic storehouse of Greece and Rome. If they did not 
 invent all, they improved and preserved for us the garnered 
 wealth of the race. Using the tools they gave us, we grope 
 
37 
 
 in the ashes of extinct dynasties, Egyptian and Oriental, to 
 find where G-reece herself sometimes studied. But for all, 
 what she borrowed and what she discovered, our debt is to 
 her. But for her, all would have been lost. It was at a Gre- 
 cian shrine that Rome herself lighted that torch which flashed 
 from the topmost of her battlements, till the shores of three 
 continents grew bright in its blaze." [Applause.] If it was 
 Rome's " car of triumph that smoothed the path for the naked 
 feet of the gospel," we owe to Greece that marvellous tongue, 
 thanks to which the gospel did not " stammer in barbarous 
 idioms." [Loud applause.] We live in the warmth of her 
 art we act in the light of her example. She gave us Ther- 
 mopylae ; she gave us Athens. How shall we ever pay it 
 back? Do not speak of gifts! Can a child, however rich, 
 give any thing to a parent? It is only debtor and creditor. 
 Greece summons her debtors the world over to pay back a 
 tithe, a mere percentage, of the incalculable benefit that her 
 intellect, her law, her example, have been to Christianity and 
 civilization. True enough, as Dr. Huntington has told us, 
 she may never play again that high-souled part in leading the 
 race. No such one great leader is necessary. She has her- 
 self lifted us to her level. But she will take her place again, 
 under proper sympathy, by the side of Italy in the great sis- 
 terhood of states. She will dispel that cloud which has rested 
 so long over Eastern Europe. She will contribute the inge- 
 nuity, the activity, the courage, the enthusiasm, the indom- 
 itable perseverance, of her race to the great cause of self- 
 government. We win her back where she belongs, — into the 
 ranks of constitutional government. We place her where the 
 world needs her, — in the very van of Europe, to represent 
 the best form of its civilization. She is strong enough in her 
 own sons, strong enough in her own determination, strong 
 enough in her undying love of liberty. Missolonghi and 
 Thermopylae — they are not an iota nobler than the men who 
 rally to-day in the mountains of Crete, with no sympathy 
 from the world, with all Europe marshalled in appearance 
 against them, and say, for the hundredth time, One efibrt 
 more to be men!" [Applause.] Every generation has brought 
 up a holocaust of its young men and its best men to the altar 
 
38 
 
 of this undying determination to be free. Have they not at 
 least won the right for America and civilization to rally 
 around tliera, and save them from this horde of pirates, from 
 this encampment of barbarians, from this law of extermina- 
 tion? I think they have. I think we are only paying an 
 honest debt. I thank God that the American people, in their 
 own struggle, not yet completed, to wipe the blot from their 
 own escutcheon, and make themselves the model state, should 
 have this appeal made to them from the youngest of Continen- 
 tal governments. Greece, in the Far East, with manhood 
 suffrage, a free press, toleration of every faith, jury trials, 
 among the elements of her civil life, — is not that brother- 
 hood? To what nation shall she go as nearer of kin to her 
 than to England and to ourselves? She had the philosophy 
 of Plato ; she had the courage and eloquence which led the 
 world. What needed she? Nothing but the old Saxon 
 forms that guard individual right. Those she adopted ; and 
 having thus made herself the complete sister of Northern and 
 Western civilization, the outpost of their future, she rises 
 again, in the universal checkmate of Europe, in the bank- 
 ruptcy and utter decrepitude of Turkey, to say to the world. 
 Give me one chance more ! " And to us she sends the mes- 
 sage, Take off the burden of wife and child, that 1 may fight 
 without this sickening of the heart! Desolation carried from 
 one end of the island to the other, so that no green thing can 
 grow upon it ! I can starve. Only give a shelter in your 
 homes, and, when they are there, bread, to wife and child, and 
 I will give you back the East of Europe, the counterpart of 
 the West." [Applause.] We in Boston sometimes fondly 
 arrogate to ourselves the name of " the Athens of America." 
 How poor our title, we ourselves know. But there is one 
 evidence of the title that we can yet put forth ; there is one 
 demonstration of brotherhood and descent that we can now 
 give to the world. When the right hand of Athens is 
 stretched out for bread, let the first cargo which goes back 
 from the world of Columbus go from the city that claims to 
 be her sister. [Enthusiastic applause.] 
 
39 
 
 Hon. John A. Andrew was presented at the conclusion of 
 Mr. Phillips's address, and drew hearty applause from the 
 audience. He said another engagement had detained him 
 until the present late hour; and being ignorant of what had 
 been said, and knowing he could add nothing, he thought he 
 would discharge his duty in reading the following resolu- 
 tions : 
 
 RESOLUTIONS. 
 
 Resolved, That, in the appeal to us of the women and chil- 
 dren of the Island of Crete to save them from starvation, we 
 recognize a claim upon our common humanity as irresistible 
 as it is pathetic. 
 
 Resolved, That, as the last great struggle of Christianity 
 against Mahometanism was fought out against the Turks by 
 Venice in Crete ; as her inhabitants were an integral part 
 of the revolution against the Turks which gave Greece her 
 independence, and had nearly expelled the enemy when the 
 Allied Powers gave the island to Turkey against the prayers 
 and protest of all Greece ; as, under the Turkish Government, 
 and its system of farming out its revenues, the Cretans have 
 been oppressed past all endurance, and have taken up arms, 
 and it is the old struggle of the Christian against the Infidel, 
 of the Bible against the Koran, of Christian marriage against 
 polygamy, of progress against barbarism, — we believe it to 
 be the duty of Christians of all sects and creeds to save these 
 women and children from starving, all the more because it 
 may incidentally help their husbands and brothers in strug- 
 gling for liberty and Christianity. 
 
 Resolved, That as, ever since her classic days, Greece has 
 been able to put the stamp of her language and national char- 
 acter upon all those whose blood has been mixed with hers ; 
 as her written language to day is nearly identical with that of 
 Plato and ^schylus ; as Greece has a public school' system 
 unequalled by any in the world, and a university among the 
 best endowed in Europe ; as the Greeks are now the princi- 
 pal merchants and sailors of the Mediterranean, and, as a 
 nation, quick-witted, united, progressive * as the Revolution 
 of 1821 and the present one in Crete have giv^n examples of 
 self sacrificing heroism worthy to stand with Thermopylae, — 
 we see in all these facts that her faults are mainly those of 
 necessity and circumstance, and that, once all jfree, she may 
 create a new history as imperishable as her old renown. 
 
40 
 
 The resolutions were loudly applauded. At the close, Gov. 
 Andrew said, I venture, Mr. Chairman, to make one single sug- 
 gestion, — that if all of us were dumb to-night, if the eloquent 
 voices which have stimulated your blood and inspired your 
 hearts had been silent as the tomb, your presence, sir, would 
 have been more eloquent than a thousand orations, when we 
 remember, that, after the lifetime of a whole generation of men, 
 he who forty years ago bared his arm to seize the Suliote 
 blade speaks again with the voice of his age in defence of 
 the cause of his youth. [Prolonged applause.] 
 
 The resolutions w^ere then adopted unanimously, and with 
 acclamations.