The power of the crown is great. It is supported by a civil list of one million of drachmas annually, in a state which has a net revenue of twelve. The enormous amount of this civil list may be estimated from the facts, that the salaries of the Greek ministers are only twelve thousand drachmas a year, and of the Greek senators only six thousand. Besides the influence which this exorbitant wealth confers on the monarch, he possesses still greater social influence, for the whole of the upper classes at Athens consist of paid officials, every one of whom is liable to lose his place at a word from King Otho, who, with very little exertion on the part of that royal memory on which kings pride themselves, may recollect every man who resides at his capital qualified to enter his palace. The desire of King Otho to extend his personal influence, and centralise power in his own hands, is so great, that every individual who receives a public appointment, however insignificant, whether at Athens or in the provinces, is compelled to wait on his majesty to thank him for the favour, which he naturally pretends to consider as a reward for his attachment to the royal Bavarian, not as a reward for his services to Greece. King Otho has been an apt pupil of Louis Philippe in the political corruption that renders the constitutional system subservient to the royal power in a thoroughly centralised administration. In one branch of political corruption King Otho may boast that he has outdone all European sovereigns. It is true, he found in the Hellenic mind a rich soil, but he may claim the merit of having worked it like a first-rate farmer. The local institutions to which the friends of Greece looked for a firm basis for liberal institutions, have in his hands been rendered the instrument for converting popular elections into royal nominations. When the Bavarian regency destroyed the communal system of Greece, they replaced it by municipalities of greater extent, and rendered the local authorities dependent on the Minister of the Interior. King Otho availed himself of the central control created by the municipal law, to make the mayor and local magistrates everywhere dependent on his personal favour. The mayors are now agents and spies of the court. This is effected in the following manner: By one of those preposterous regulations, framed by statesmen to delude the people with a show of conferring on them free institutions, the nomination of the mayor is vested in the central government. An oligarchical college of electors selects three members of the municipality, and from these his majesty selects the most subservient to occupy the place. By availing himself skilfully of this absurd law, King Otho has filled the towns of Greece with magistrates entirely dependent on his will—men whom their fellow-citizens, if universal suffrage prevailed in the municipal elections of the mayors as it does in the more important elections of