The commerce of the Morea, and of modern Greece in general, is greatly fettered by the restraints of the Ottoman government. The Greeks have a flag for their merchant vessels, but not being au independent people, it is little respected by other nations ; and their Turkish masters, who are jealous of their power, seldom resent any insult offered to them at sea. They are not permitted to trade farther west than Tunis, Malta, and Messina ; and the Algerine corsairs are permitted, by treaty with the Grand Seignior, to cap ture any of his Grecian subjects who may be found trading to the westward of these ports. Thus unpro tected and exposed, they are apt to seek redress at their own hands ; and, when insulted by any vessel of superior force, they retaliate cruelly upon any inferior ship belonging to the same nation which may fall in their way. The Morca produces a great variety of ar ticles which are valuable in commerce ; and many of them such as are in great request in the British market. Dried fruits of various kinds, almonds, small nuts, gums, galls, and a variety of drugs, are very common articles of traffic. But the larger and more valuable commodities which the country affords, are currants, which are larger and cleaner than those of most other countries, and of which eight millions of pounds weight are said to be annually exported, usually at three half pence per lb. English ; young fustic, a valuable dye wood for bright yellow ; cotton in considerable quanti ties, but rather of an inferior quality ; olive oil of a to lerably good quality, and much cheaper than that of Italy and Sicily, generally at £25 per ton; valonia, a kind of acorn used in tanning, and much in demand by the Eng lish ; corn, wool, silk, carpets, leather, vermilion, wine, wax, cheese, are frequent articles of export.
The articles of import generally carried to the Le vant, are watches, jewellery, glass, porcelain, furs, spices, coffee, sugar, indigo, cochineal, sulphur, silk, gold-lace, cloth, muslins, hardware, and other manu factured goods of England and France. The balance of trade is alleged to be one-fifth in favour of the Mo rea, which is paid in silver coin. Of this amount, two millions of piastres go as tribute to Constantinople ; one million is taken by the Pasha of Tripolizza ; and the remainder, about 1,093,750 piastres, is the profit of the rich Greeks. The Frank residents are only a sort of brokers, who have a per tentage upon the traffic.
The Greeks are universally addicted to commerce, and their marine is in many respects highly important. The islanders form the most enterprising portion of the nation, and carry on a petty trade in numberless balf-decked boats, with high stems and sterns, and one thick short mast, with a long yard. They perform these voyages, even as far as Smyrna and Constantino ple, without chart or compass, and merely, as of old, by the observation of coasts and headlands. But they are acquainted with the management of the largest vessels of European construction ; and, besides navigat ing the Ottoman navy as seamen, they have large mer chant ships of their own, which trade as far as America and the West Indies, and make an occasional voyage to England. The natives of Hydra particularly, the most expert of the Greek mariners, have accumulated great wealth by their commerce, and have purchased from the Turks the independent election of their own magistrates. The number of Greek mariners actually
employed at sea, is supposed to be not less than 50,000 ; and they are considered as capable of being trained to any kind of naval service.
Though the modern Greeks are very ignorant, they are a very ingenious people ; and, if rescued from oppression, might again distinguish themselves in the arts and sciences. But, since the 12th century, they have made no improvements, and transmitted no in ventions to other nations. Their ancient authors had long lain neglected in monasteries and libraries ; their late writers were rather expert grammarians than ori ginal authors ; and the revival of their literature, in the 14th and 15th centuries, was more owing to the exertions of the Italian literati than of native Greeks. The corruption of the Greek language has been dated from the time of the Macedonian conquest, and is par ticularly ascribed to the extension of the Roman power ; but it appears to have survived as a living language in considerable purity so late as the 11th or 12th centuries. The irruption of the Goths and other barbarians, and the settlement of the Sclavonians and Franks in Greece, oc casioned numerous corruptions, about the beginning of the 13th century ; and the establishment of the Ottoman empire introduced many Turkish terms and idioms ; but it is not possible to fix the precise period when the distinction between the Hellenic or ancient, and the Romaic or modern dialect, was generally acknowledged. It appears that a multitude of different dialects prevailed in the progress of its corruptions, not less, it is said, than seventy ; and that the Romaic did not become an estab lished 1-anguage till about a century after the Turkish conquest. The first instance of it, as a written language, is a translation of the four apologies of John Catacuze nus into the vulgar tongue by Meletius Syrigus, a Cre tan, who died in 1662. The earliest and best of the grammars of this new language is that of Portius, also a native of Crete, which may be seen in the glossary of Du Cange. Besides the introduction of new vocables, the modern dialect drops the inverted arrangement of the words, forms the tenses by the aid of the auxiliary verb, and makes great use of the contractions, so as to blend several words into one. The pronunciation un questionably became vitiated along with the structure of the language ; but the Byzantine Greeks maintain that they still possess the ancient mode of reading. it. A sketch of the modern dialect, and of its pronunciation, may be seen in the appendix to Hobhouse's Travels, and Dalaway's Description of the Levant ; hut the following specimen of the mode of reading the first lines of Ho mer, as given by the former writer, may give some idea of the modern pronunciation. The a is to be sounded as in the English word plate : There are great varieties, however, in the mode of ,peaking the Romaic. The Greeks of the Morea and nn the coasts of the Adriatic, intermix more of the Ve netian ; and those of the Archipelago or Smyrna, more of the Turkish ; while those of the Farm', in Constanti nople, speak it in the most classical style of purity.