Representative British Orations Volume 4 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
History
Representative British Orations Volume 4 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
Speeches, addresses, etc., English
Then came the case of two men, whose houses being infested by
disagreeable insects, thought proper in hot weather to sleep in the
streets. They were taken up by the police, carried before an officer,
and severely flogged with a whip in the sight of persons who deposed to
the fact. What right had the Greek authorities to flog these men? They
had committed no offence; there had been no trial, no condemnation, no
sentence. In this case, also, compensation was demanded, as a token
that persons under British protection cannot be ill treated with
impunity.
Then I come to the case of Mr. Finlay.[11] It is said that he is a
“cannie Scot”; that he speculated in land, buying in the cheapest, and
wishing to sell in the dearest market. His land was taken by the King
of Greece, for purposes of private enjoyment. Nobody will deny that it
is fitting the Sovereign of Greece should have a palace; and, if it
was necessary to take Mr. Finlay’s ground for site, or for the garden
attached to it--Mr. Finlay himself made no objection to that. All that
Mr. Finlay wanted was to be paid for his land at a very cheap rate.
That was a matter with which the Greek Government had nothing to do;
they had only to pay Mr. Finlay what was the value of the land at the
time when they took it from him.
The conduct of the Greek Government in Mr. Finlay’s case was very
different from that of Frederick the Great in a similar case towards
one of his subjects, a man of humble rank. This man refused to sell
his sovereign a little bit of ground on which a windmill stood, the
ground being necessary for the completion of a magnificent plan of
residence for the monarch. The conduct of the King of Prussia was very
different from that of the King of Greece. The King of Prussia, though
a conqueror in the field and the absolute monarch of a great country,
respected the rights of a subject however humble; and not only left
the monument of the independence of his subject, standing in the midst
of his ornamented grounds, but used to point to it with pride, feeling
that it was proof that though he was great and powerful, he knew how to
respect the rights of the meanest. For fourteen long years Mr. Finlay
was driven from pillar to post, put off with every sort of shuffling
and evasive excuse, and deprived of compensation for his land, unless
he would take what was wholly inadequate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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