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Updated: June 26, 2025
Gordon, that the Heteria should have waited for a century, by which time they suppose that the growth of means in favor of Greece would have concurred with a more than corresponding decay in her enemy.
There were, in fact, five degrees in the Heteria. The next degree of Systimenoi, or bachelors, who were selected with more anxious discrimination, were informed that this design was to move towards its object by means of a revolution.
This state of affairs could not escape the attention of the vigilant Heteria. Here was Ali Pacha, hitherto regarded as an insurmountable obstacle in their path, absolutely compelled by circumstances to be their warmest friend.
It is an evidence of some latent nobility in the Greek character, in the midst of that levity with which all Europe taxes it, that never, except once, were the secrets of the society betrayed; nor was there the least ground for jealousy offered either to the stupid Moslems, in the very centre of whom, and round about them, the conspiracy was daily advancing, or even to the rigorous police of Moscow, where the Heteria had its head-quarters.
In the single instance of treachery which occurred, it happened that the Zantiote, who made the discovery to Ali Pacha on a motion of revenge, was himself too slenderly and too vaguely acquainted with the final purposes of the Heteria for effectual mischief, having been fortunately admitted only to its lowest degree of initiation; so that all passed off without injury to the cause, or even personally to any of its supporters.
The fourth class was that of the prelates; and to this order, which never exceeded the number of one hundred and sixteen, and comprehended the leading men of the nation, the most unreserved information was given upon all the secrets of the Heteria; after which they were severally appointed to a particular district, as superintendent of its interests, and as manager of the whole correspondence on its concerns with the Grand Arch.
It cannot be denied that a secret society, with the grand and almost awful purposes of the Heteria, spite of some taint which it had received in its early stages from the spirit of German mummery, is fitted to fill the imagination, and to command homage from the coldest.
In 1815, in consequence chiefly of the disappointment which the Greeks met with in their dearest hopes from the Congress of Vienna, the Heteria first assumed a political character under the secret influence of Count Capodistria, of Corfu, who, having entered the Russian service as mere private secretary to Admiral Tchitchagoff, in 1812, had, in a space of three years, insinuated himself into the favor of the Czar, so far as to have become his private secretary, and a cabinet minister of Russia.
Nor is there in the whole annals of man a manoeuvre so admirable as that, by which this society, silently effecting its own transfiguration, and recasting as in a crucible its own form, organs, and most essential functions, contrived, by mere force of seasonable silence, or by the very pomp of mystery, to carry over from the first or innoxious model of the Heteria, to its new organization, all those weighty names of kings or princes who would not have given their sanction to any association having political objects, however artfully veiled.
The early history of the Heteria is shrouded in the same mystery as the whole course of its political movements. Some suppose that Alexander Maurocordato, ex-Hospodar of Wallachia, during his long exile in Russia, founded it for the promotion of education, about the beginning of the present century. Others ascribe it originally to Riga.
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