ew is given in a
remarkable letter, dated 1st February 1823, to the prince who was soon
to become Charles X.[33] The French government had declared that a
people could only receive a free constitution as a gift from their
legitimate kings. Should the English ministry, says Canning, after
this declaration, support the French in their attack upon the
constitutional government of Spain, it would be driven from office
amid 'the execration of Tories and Whigs alike.' He thought that the
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was less alien to the
spirit of the British Constitution than the opposite doctrine of the
legitimists. In the early days, when Canning sat at the feet of Pitt,
the war, if not in their eyes an Anti-Jacobin crusade, had to be
supported by stimulating the Anti-Jacobin sentiment. In later days,
the war had come to be a struggle against the oppression of nations by
foreign despots. Canning could now accept the version of Pitt's policy
which corresponded to the later phase. Englishmen in general had no
more sympathy for despots who claimed a divine right than for despots
who acted in the name of democracy--especially when the despots
threatened to interfere with British trade. When Canning called 'the
new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,'[34] he
declared that English policy should resist threats from the Holy
Alliance directed against some of our best customers. The general
approval had special force among the Utilitarians. In the South
American States Bentham had found eager proselytes, and had hoped to
become a Solon. He had been consulted by the constitutionalists in
Spain and Portugal; and he and his disciples, Joseph Hume in
particular, had joined the Greek Committee, and tried to regenerate
Athens by sound Utilitarian tracts. All English Liberals sympathised
with the various movements which were more or less favoured by
Canning's policy; but the Utilitarians could also see in them the
opening of new fields already white for the harvest.

The foreign policy was significant. It proved that the war, whatever
else it had done, had not brought back the old order; and the old
British traditions in favour of liberty of speech and action would
revive now that they were no longer trammelled by the fears of a
destructive revolution. The days of July in 1830 gave fresh importance
to the reaction of foreign upon English politics.

II. LAW REFORM

Meanwhile, however, the Utilitarians