We have now arrived at the period when King Otho assumed the reins of government. From the year 1838 to the present day, he has been his own irresponsible prime minister; for the apparent ministers Zographos, Païkos, Maurocordatos and Rizos, have never enjoyed his unlimited confidence, nor have they been viewed with much favour by the people. Indeed, with the exception of Maurocordatos, they are men of inferior ability, and of no character or standing in the country. Any one who will take the trouble to read those portions of their diplomatic correspondence with the ministers of the allied powers at Athens, which have been published, will be convinced of their utter unfitness for the offices they have held. Let the reader contrast these precious specimens of inaccuracy and rigmarole, with the come-to-the-truth style of our own minister, or the sarcastic, let-us-go-quietly-over-your-reasoning style, in which the Russian minister answers them. In order that our readers may form some idea of the manner in which King Otho has carried on the government for five years, we shall describe the political machine he has framed--name it we cannot; for it resembles nothing the world has yet seen amidst all the multifarious combinations of cabinet-making, which kings, sultans, krals, emperors, czars, or khans, have yet presented to the envious contemplation of aspiring statesmen. The king of Greece, it must be observed, is a monarch whose ministers are held by a fiction of law to be responsible; and the editor of an Athenian newspaper has been fined and imprisoned for declaring that this fiction is not a fact. These ministers are not permitted by King Otho to assemble together in council, unless he himself be present. The assembly would be too democratic for Otho's nerves. In short, the king has a ministry, but his ministers do not form a cabinet; his cabinet is a separate concern. Each minister waits on his majesty with his portfolio under his arm, and receives the royal commands. To simplify business, however, and make the ministers fully sensible of their real insignificancy, King Otho frequently orders the clerks in the public offices to come to his royal presence, with the papers on which they have been engaged; and by this means he shows the ministers, that though they are necessary in consequence of the fiction of law, they may be rendered very secondary personages in their own departments. If it were not a useless waste of time, we could lay before our readers instances of this singularly easy mode of doing business--instances too, which have been officially communicated to the allied powers. His majesty carried his love of performing ministerial duties so far, that for more than a year he dispensed entirely with a minister of finance, and divided the functions of that office among three of the clerks: no bad preparation for a national bankruptcy, we must allow--yet the protecting powers viewed this