1823.

Greece. J.B. Observations on particular Articles

?3 III. Grecian points unapt

This done, take four other individuals say for example the four other Members of the so-stiled Executive Council, and give to them respectively the functions and powers possessed respectively by the abovementioned Secretaries. Call them Secretaries or Ministers as you please: but on account of the collateral ideas associated with the two denominations respectively my recommendation would be to call them Secretaries and not Ministers. Under the appellation of Secretaries they present to my imagination the images of so many responsible instruments of good government, under a free and happy people: under the name of Ministers, as the ever mischievous and profligate tools of a Monarch leagued or not leagued with a set of sub-despots in the condition of Aristocrats, having for their sole business the exercise of depredation and oppression in all their forms over, and at the expence of, all the other members of the community who are not sharers with them in the spoil.

Be this as it may, having these five functionaries thus equipped with power, no need have you either of the Executive Council with its five Members or of Your eight Ministers of State.

Note that seeing that four Secretaries are sufficient, for conducting, under the President, the whole of the business of the Executive Department in the Anglo-American United States, not merely four, but even fewer than four, should be sufficient in Greece, were it not for a Secretary or a Minister of Justice which I should see reason to add, tho' no such functionary was found requisite in those United States. For whether it be population or territory that is considered, but more especially if it be territory, think how small the scale is, upon which every thing, that has place, has place in Greece, when compared with the vast scale upon which population, but more particularly territory, has place in that only as yet known seat of Good Government!