This episode of the certificate, whether its existence be a fact or a fable, placed an impassable barrier between Lord Palmerston and King Otho. Right or wrong, his Hellenic Majesty held the English foreign secretary responsible for the publication, for he believed that the English Government possessed the power of dragging the calumniator to light, and that it would have used the power had the anonymous correspondent not been protected by a powerful patron. Besides, the King of Greece might well ask, who in England could have acquired the knowledge which enabled this correspondent to attack the person of a monarch under the special protection of Great Britain, without fear of investigation or reply, unless the information came directly from some high diplomatic authority. We need not wonder, therefore, when we find that, from June 1839, hatred to England was the prominent feeling displayed by the Greek court in all its relations with the British cabinet. Lord Palmerston, finding all hope of acquiring influence in the Greek court vain, changed his policy, and became the advocate of constitutional government. The revolution in 1843 afforded the British cabinet an opportunity of putting our relations with Greece on a proper footing; but the opportunity was lost. Instead of English influence being employed to restore the national institutions destroyed by the Bavarians, it supported the establishment of what is called the constitutional form of government. One of those compilations of political commonplace which the lawgivers of our age are ready, at a week’s notice, to prepare either for Greenland or China, was translated from French pamphlets, and entitled the _Constitution of Greece_. Lord Aberdeen, who was then foreign secretary, committed as great a blunder in engaging Great Britain to stand godfather to this constitution, as Lord Palmerston had done in making Old England guardian to King Otho. The following are the words in which the British Government thought fit to record its approbation of this inane waste of time and paper,—“Her Majesty’s Government have viewed with no less satisfaction the admirable temper which appears to have generally prevailed in the Constituent Assembly, throughout the whole of her deliberations on the deeply interesting and important act on which they have been engaged. Such self-command in a popular Assembly, convoked under very exciting and critical circumstances, is highly creditable to the Greek nation. Nor is the result of their labours, as a whole, less entitled to credit for the general soundness of the constitutional principles therein established.”