Mismanagement marked the progress of the cause in Europe as in Asia. Two excellent Swedish vessels were offered for £47,000. Time was success, and, instead of purchasing vessels ready for action, contracts were made with America for two frigates at £160,000. A cavalry officer was appointed to superintend the naval department, and in two months and a half five steamboats were to be placed at the disposal of Lord Cochrane. “Within a few weeks,” said Mr. Ellice, rather more pompously than to the purpose, “Lord Cochrane will be at Constantinople, and burn the Turkish vessels at that port. Cochrane will suffice for admiral and general. He will clear Greece of the Turk.” “Give yourselves no further concern about the matter,” said Sir Francis Burdett, speaking as familiarly of war as of reform; “your country shall be saved.” But though Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Ellice said it, the country was not saved. After spending £155,000 on two frigates, £50,000 more were required to finish them. This was not forthcoming, and the vessels were seized. All seemed anarchy and confusion. Schemes of the most extravagant character were propounded. Three very important towns were to be besieged and carried by one thousand men. A free press was to shed light and lustre around. Improvements which were impracticable, and a constitution which could not be carried, were promised. During this unhappy period, the news of cities burned to the ground, and forts stormed, of besieged places sacked after months of heroic resistance, aroused the public; and a storm of indignation was poured upon projectors, deputies, and proprietors. The flagrant enormities of the management were exposed, the military projects discussed, the financial artifices denounced; and attention was pointed, through the report of the committee, at two, whose voices, loud in the cause of Greece, were said to be louder in their own. Joseph Hume, a member of the senate, and John Bowring, a linguist and a scholar, were on the committee. Reports which touched the honor of both were in free circulation. Political feeling, perhaps, prompted many of the remarks; and the public press asserted that to which no honorable man could submit. Mr. Merle, at a public meeting, said “he had been told that certain portions of the Greek loan had been appropriated to Mr. Hume; that those bonds had not been taken up; and that they had afterwards been sold at a great loss to the Greek government.” “Mr. Hume,” wrote a daily paper, “has been publicly accused of fraud and hypocrisy, in throwing upon the Greek nation the loss which attended a speculation of his own, while acting in the assumed character of a friend to the cause.”