erona that England
would not sanction any project for the interference of foreign sovereigns
with the domestic affairs of Spain. When the Duke found that his
arguments and his remonstrances were of no avail, he withdrew from the
Congress altogether and left the members of the Holy Alliance to take on
themselves the full responsibility of their own policy. Now it would be
hardly possible to overrate the importance of the step thus taken by
England at a great crisis in the public affairs of Europe. The reign of
George the Fourth would be memorable in history if it had been
consecrated by nothing but this event. The utter disruption between the
old state policy and the new was proclaimed by the instructions which
Canning sent to the Duke of Wellington, and which were faithfully carried
out by the Duke. No English Government has, in later days, ventured to
profess openly any other foreign policy than that announced by Canning.
Other ministers in later times may have attempted, now and then, to
swerve from it in this direction and in that, and to cover their evasion
of it by specious pleas, but the new doctrine set up by Canning has never
since his time found avowed apostates among English statesmen. It would
have been well if such a principle could have inspired the foreign policy
of England in the days when the French Revolution broke out, and if
England had then proclaimed that she would be no party to any attempt
made by foreign States to prevent the people of France from settling
their own systems of government for themselves. Europe might have been
saved a series of disastrous wars. France might have been relieved from
counter-revolutions, seasons of anarchy, and seasons of military
despotism. England might long have had friendly neighbors where even yet
she has perhaps only concealed enemies.

The designs of the Holy Alliance soon made themselves manifest. The
French Government had brought so much pressure to bear on the feeble King
of Spain that he revoked the Constitution which, at a better moment, he
had {43} granted to his people. There was an attempt at revolution in
Spain, and the attempt was put down by the strong hand with the
assistance of France, and the leading rebels were at once conducted to
the scaffold. Portugal still kept those free institutions which England
had enabled her to preserve, and still retained her sympathy with
freedom. Canning soon saw that a part of the policy of the French