of the powers that had assumed the task of the
settlement of Greece was to determine the limits within which that
settlement was to be effected. It might be urged that all the Greeks who
had accepted the armistice imposed by the powers in consequence of the
treaty of London had a right to share in the settlement at which that
treaty aimed. But the armistice had been broken by Greek attacks on
Chios and Crete, and Wellington held that the powers were, in
consequence, free from any obligation imposed by the nominal acceptance
of the armistice. He, accordingly, desired to adopt the simple principle
of granting the proposed autonomy to those parts of Greece in which the
insurrection had proved successful, namely, the Morea and the AEgean
Islands, and refusing it in Northern and Central Greece, where the
Turkish forces still held their own. But the British cabinet was far
from being unanimous; many, among whom Palmerston was specially
prominent, urged the concession of a greatly increased territory. The
changes which took place in the British ministry towards the end of May,
1828, deprived Palmerston of his share in its deliberations, and by
substituting Aberdeen for Dudley at the foreign office, placed our
foreign relations under the direction of a man of talent and experience,
who had already exercised an important influence on British policy and
who was more in sympathy with the policy of the prime minister than
Dudley had been, but who was not content, like Dudley, to be a mere
cipher in the department over which he was called to preside. Aberdeen,
though opposed to the narrow boundaries which Wellington wished to
assign to liberated Greece, was no less antagonistic than his chief to
any attempt to make the new Greek state politically important; and he
was even of opinion that the Russian declaration of war had released
Great Britain from any further obligation under the treaty of London.

Such were the composition and policy of the British government when the
conference of London reassembled in July. The differences between the
powers had prevented any active intervention in Greece, since the battle
of Navarino. The ports in the Morea, still occupied by Ibrahim, had
indeed been blockaded, but it had been found impossible to induce
Austrian vessels to acknowledge a blockade of such questionable
legality, and the allied fleets had even permitted the embarkation of
Ibrahim's sick and wounded together with 5,500 Greek priso