nd international principle had come to dominate the European
political system. The Treaty of Vienna was an unprincipled compromise
among the divergent interests and claims of the dominant Powers, and the
triumphant monarchs ignored their promises of national reform or
representation. For one whole generation they resolutely suppressed, so
far as they were able, every symptom of an insurgent democratic or
national idea. They sought persistently and ingeniously to identify in
Europe the principle of political integrity and order with the principle
of the legitimate monarchy. But obscurantist as were the ideas and the
policy of the Holy Alliance, the political system it established was an
enormous improvement upon that of the eighteenth century. Not only was
the sense of responsibility of the governing classes very much
quickened, but the international system was based on a comparatively
moral and rational idea. For the first time in European history a group
of rulers, possessing in theory absolute authority and forming an
apparently irresistible combination, exercised this power with
moderation. They did not combine, as in the case of the partition of
Poland, to break the peace and prey upon a defenseless neighbor, but to
keep the peace; and if to keep the peace meant the suppression wherever
possible of liberal political ideas, it meant also the renunciation of
aggressive foreign policies. In this way Europe obtained the rest which
was necessary after the havoc of the Revolutionary wars, while at the
same time the principle on which the Holy Alliance was based was being
put to the test of experience. Such a test it could not stand. The
people of Europe were not content to identify the principle of political
order, whether in domestic or foreign affairs, with that of legitimate
monarchy and with the arbitrary political alignments of the Treaty of
Vienna. Such a settlement ignored the political forces and ideas which,
while originating in Revolutionary France, had none the less saved
Europe from the consequences of French Revolutionary and Imperial
aggression.

Beginning in 1848, Europe entered upon another period of revolutionary
disturbance, which completely destroyed the political system of the Holy
Alliance. At the outset these revolutions were no more respectful of
national traditions than was the French Revolution; and as long as they
remained chiefly subversive in idea and purpose, they accomplished
little. But afte