Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/200

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178 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. no aim save that of regaining our rights, and pre- serving our existence and our honor." Their appeals and proclamations remained perfectly futile. The world continued to regard them as subjects in rebellion against their lawful sover- eign. They hastened to send a mission to the Con- gress of Verona to explain their wishes and plead their cause. The Congress refused, thanks to the influence of Prince Metternich, even to receive the petition. They forbade the Greek representatives to set foot in Verona, and requested the Pope to expel them from Ancona. It was in the lurid glare of Chios that the powers met at Verona to declare " that the sov- ereigns had determined to repel the principle of revolution without inquiring in what shape or in what country it made its appearance," and Wel- lington was the voice of Christian constitutional England on that occasion. Chios is an island with a population of one hundred thousand Greeks. This island was a kind of an apanage (mastic patch) of the Sultana mother. Chios became the garden of the archi- pelago. It drew to itself all that was refined, intelligent, and cultivating in Greek society. Schools, colleges, libraries were founded and