instead a precedent was allowed which may some day be used against our very selves with terrible effect.

Asking no intervention, praying only that no European nation on any specious pretext might interfere, putting their trust alone in the, God of armies and themselves, the Cretan Greeks girded themselves to fight the battle to its bitter end.

The story of these last months around that rocky island is not only too familiar but too harrowing to repeat. The two hundred and seventy thousand Christian Cretans could conquer, did conquer, the Turks as they had conquered them more than once before, but they stood aghast, confronted by the allied ironclads of a continent. It required profounder brains than theirs to tell why Christian England trained her cannon upon them, whose only crime was, longing to be free!

When Greece at last, wrought to sympathetic frenzy, drew her sword in a cause that to her was holy, she did not find for her warfare that most sacred right of all contestants, fair play and an open field. Through seventy years she has been the football of European diplomacy and is so still. Yet history presents no sublimer spectacle than Greece, heedless of cost, reckless of consequences, in delirious yet almost hopeless battle, throwing herself, with feet and hands half tied, upon the mighty Mussulman oppressor of her kin. It was not prudent, it was not sagacious or discreet; yet such grandeur of rashness and folly ennobles the race, and streams a little light upon a sordid world. During the last few years, the press, the pulpit, the human conscience, have denounced the barbarism and the inhumanity of the Turk. Greece alone has dared to beard him!

In the vastitude of Europe, in the dreary expanse of races beyond the ocean, only two national figures stand out, worthy exponents of the principles they profess. The one, the Turk, challenges a measure of our respect.

He is no other than he claims to be. He puts forth no professions that sicken us by their cant. Warlike, ferocious, sanguinary, fanatic, he is the child and not the bastard of the torpid, unprogressive, despotic, bloody East. He stands today a conqueror, triumphant and erect. Well may the astute Sultan smile, for he knows that to the followers of the Messiah he is in large degree indebted for his freshest victory over freedom and the cross.

The other figure is the Greek. Outgeneraled, defeated, fleeing, with no laurels of success but only the unfading laurels of a high endeavor, he is a kinsman of whom his buried Spartan and Athenian ancestors may well be proud. His was a more herculean task than theirs. They fought only against Asiatic hordes. He contended likewise against Asiatic hordes, but his antagonists were equipped with the arms, were disciplined and commanded by the officers and supported by the statecraft of the Christian West.

With hearts that ache, we turn from the contemplation of today. This latest, saddest episode seems drawing to its melancholy end; but the unknown future is before us. If the modern Greek were not the child of the ancient we might well deem him his twin. Brothers are they, though thousands of years apart!

"Thus fought the Greek of old!

Thus shall he fight again!

Shall not the selfsame mould

Bring forth the selfsame men!"

THE GENERAL COURT AND QUARRELS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS ARISING FROM THE LAND BANK,

BY ANDREW MCFARLAND DAVIS.

DURING the period when the affairs of the Land Bank were under consideration by the General Court, the time of the Court was taken up not only by the perplexing nature of the legislation required from the peculiar circumstances under which the scheme was closed, but also by the urgency with which those interested, from time to time, demanded reports from the Commissioners and investigations of their doings. As time went on new difficulties arose, and fresh legislation was necessary, if it was really desired that the affairs of the Bank should be wound up. The conflict between the Directors and the general partners caused by the losses incurred in trade became more and more acute, and in one shape or another was constantly cropping out, to the annoyance and embarrassment of the Commissioners and of the General Court. In addition to the intrusion of the affairs of the Land Bank upon the time and patience of the Court, came the private petitions for the relief of individual sufferers.

The story of the legislation was told last year, and the narrative necessarily included some details concerning these matters, but in the treatment of that subject and of the litigation in the Courts, the affairs of individuals were not dealt with. For the purpose of illustrating the complications which were created by the methods adopted to close the Land Bank, I have selected from among the petitions brought before the General Court, those presented by

Nathaniel Martyn, who figures as a possessor of bills, and by Samuel Stevens, one of the partners whom he had sued. In what follows, a brief statement will be found of the several papers presented by these two men. The various phases of the difficulties encountered by Stevens through his unfortunate connection with this enterprise are brought out with considerable force, if one has patience to trace the story to its end. The picture of the son, in the last petition of all, himself by that time an old man, taking the father's place as petitioner and urging upon the General Court the consideration of his father's losses, is pathetic in the extreme. We have here in real life, the shipwreck of the career of two men vividly brought out in the documents presented by the father and son. The sufferings caused by the protracted suits in the Chancery Courts of Scotland and England, furnished Scott and Dickens with themes of which they availed themselves to arouse the sympathy of their readers. At their hands, the story of the Stevens family would have been of equal avail. It is not to be inferred that there were other petitioners who occupied the time of the Court to an equal extent. Martyn and Stevens engrossed the attention of the public and of the Courts far more than any others of the sufferers and litigants, but they were by no means alone. Others from time to time, with less pertinacity, urged their claims upon the attention of the Court. The close connection of Martyn with the case of Stevens, would have compelled consideration of his petitions, if we would have the whole story of the Stevens matter, but apart from that, the fact that the General Court remanded him to the custody of the sheriff of Suffolk County, to be confined in the common gaol until he should apologize for his insolent language, naturally gives special interest to his own affairs.

While it can scarcely be expected that the dry details connected with these papers can prove of general interest,

it must be evident that the story of the Land Bank would be incomplete, if the manner in which the time of the General Court was taken up with these details were not in some way brought out.

On the 20th of March, 1741-42, a petition headed by Nathaniel Martyn was presented to the General Court, in which the subscribers set forth that they had been for a long time possessors of large quantities of negotiable notes called Manufactory notes or bills; that since the suppression of the Land Bank by Act of Parliament these notes were made redeemable, and subscribers to the Bank became thereby subject to prosecutions in their personal and political capacities if they neglected to redeem them. For these reasons the petitioners had given the bills credit, but payment of the notes had been refused by many of the partners. Unless assisted by the General Court it would become necessary for the petitioners to prosecute a great number of the partners without regard to the question whether they had paid the assessments laid by the Directors. For the prevention of a multiplicity of law-suits and for the protection of those partners who had complied with their duty, the petitioners prayed that some effectual method might be devised by the Court for compelling those concerned to make the redemption called for by the Act of Parliament. It is not to be supposed that Martyn and the other possessors of notes who thus petitioned the General Court for relief could have anticipated any direct action in their behalf. They had evidently waited, restrained perhaps by the strong feeling of public sympathy which the misfortunes of the unfortunate partners had aroused, and they now realized that the attempt was to be made to wind up the affairs of the Bank without legislation if possible. Their rights to sue partners in the Land Bank in order to secure the redemption of bills of the Bank were at that time based exclusively upon the Act of Parliament, for