But the British government
objected to the separation and their union with Greece. Mr. Gladstone
was to repair to Corfu for the purpose of reconciling the people to the
British protectorate. The Ionians regarded his appointment as a virtual
abandonment of the protectorate of Great Britain. Mr. Gladstone,
December 3d, addressed the Senate at Corfu in Italian. He had the
reputation of being a Greek student, and the inhabitants of the Islands
persisted in regarding him not as a Commissioner of a Conservative
English Government, but as "Gladstone the Phil-Hellene!" He made a tour
of the Islands, holding levees, receiving deputations and delivering
harangues, and was received wherever he went with the honors due to a
liberator. His path everywhere was made to seem like a triumphal
progress. It was in vain he repeated his assurance that he came to
reconcile them to the protectorate and not to deliver them from it. But
the popular instinct insisted upon regarding him as at least the
precursor of their union with the Kingdom of Greece. The legislative
assembly met January 27, 1859, and proposed annexation to Greece.
Finding that this was their firm wish and determination, Mr. Gladstone
despatched to the Queen a copy of the vote, in which the representatives
declared that "the single and unanimous will of the Ionian people has
been and is for their union with the Kingdom of Greece.
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