Note 14 — LORD PALMERSTON. ON THE CASE OF DON PACIFICO: HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 25, 1850.

Note 14, p. 184.—The little Ionian republic, seven-isled, or Heptanēsos, was formally taken under the protection of England in 1815. This protectorate endured until the accession (1863) of George, the present King of the Hellenes, when, at the request of the islanders, the republic was incorporated with Hellas proper, to which ethnically and geographically it belonged. During the period of the protectorate England was represented by a series of Lord High Commissioners, of whom the first, Sir Thomas Maitland, familiarly known in the Levant as “King Tom,” was in many respects a character. His palace, still a prominent feature of the town of Corfu, is of almost baronial splendor; to the south of the Esplanade the grateful Ionians erected in 1816 a small circular temple in his honor. Corfu, the island, is probably the most famous of the group, having been, as the ancient Kérkura, a Corinthian colony, one of the inciting causes of the Peloponnesian War. Antiquity also somewhat fancifully identified it with the Homeric Scheria, the abode of Alkinoos and the matchless Nausikaa, naming its neighbor Ithaka—that other Odyssean isle. It is to be said that the latter identification is less fanciful than the former.