of the Tepelenian dynasty. Already he had a consul at Leucadia accepted
by the English, who, it is said, encouraged him to declare himself
hereditary Prince of Greece, under the nominal suzerainty of the sultan;
their real intention being to use him as a tool in return for their
protection, and to employ him as a political counter-balance to the
hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia, who for the last twenty years had
been simply Russian agents in disguise. This was not all; many of the
adventurers with whom the Levant swarms, outlaws from every country,
had found a refuge in Albania, and helped not a little to excite Ali's
ambition by their suggestions. Some of these men frequently saluted him
as King, a title which he affected to reject with indignation; and he
disdained to imitate other states by raising a private standard of his
own, preferring not to compromise his real power by puerile displays of
dignity; and he lamented the foolish ambition of his children, who would
ruin him, he said, by aiming, each, at becoming a vizier. Therefore he
did not place his hope or confidence in them, but in the adventurers
of every sort and kind, pirates, coiners, renegades, assassins, whom
he kept in his pay and regarded as his best support. These he sought to
attach to his person as men who might some day be found useful, for
he did not allow the many favours of fortune to blind him to the real
danger of his position. "A vizier," he was answered, "resembles a man
wrapped in costly furs, but he sits on a barrel of powder, which only
requires a spark to explode it." The Divan granted all the concessions
which Ali demanded, affecting ignorance of his projects of revolt
and his intelligence with the enemies of the State; but then apparent
weakness was merely prudent temporising. It was considered that Ali,
already advanced in years, could not live much longer, and it was hoped
that, at his death, Continental Greece, now in some measure detached
from the Ottoman rule, would again fall under the sultan's sway.