The election of the mayor and aldermen is vested in an electoral college, one half of which is composed of the persons who pay the greatest amount of taxes. Here is an element of respectability; but in order to dilute it with one of servility, a certain number of individuals, decorated with crosses, is admitted. Even this respectably servile body is not allowed to elect the mayor; it is only empowered to name three candidates, from which the King chooses the individual who is to direct the interests of the little community. The mayor so chosen enjoys his office for three years, and receives a good salary from the municipal funds. Let us now examine how this system is worked, in conformity with constitutional principles, in the capital of the Hellenic kingdom. Attica, it must be observed, sends four deputies to the Legislative Chamber; and as these deputies receive two hundred and fifty drachmas a-month, and have succeeded in making the sittings of the Greek Chambers perpetual, the place of deputy is worth as much as the best estates in Greece. Now, as these interminable sitters are chosen by universal suffrage, but are required to support the minister, it became absolutely necessary to job the elections, by means of the oligarchy holding office in the municipalities. This was not very difficult, for the number of persons who can read and write among the Albanian population of Attica, which outnumbers the Greek, is very small. Even among the Greek population of the city of Athens, the proportion of government officials and street porters, who pay no taxes, exceeds the number of the independent citizens. The middle classes, and the friends of order, are excluded from all local influence, by being excluded from any share in the municipal government. A town-council party is formed, and this party is allowed to employ the whole local revenues of Attica, amounting to between three and four hundred thousand drachmas annually, in jobbing, on condition that they support the ministerial candidates at the elections.