Bourbon claims to Naples and Parma. Sir Henry Wellesley, afterwards Lord
Cowley, was, however, successful in negotiating a treaty of alliance
between Great Britain and Spain, which made provision against any
renewal of the family compact, restored the commercial relations of the
two countries to the footing on which they had been before 1796, and
promised the future consideration of means to be adopted for the
suppression of the slave trade. Spain was in fact too dependent on
British credit to be able to adopt a line of her own in politics. But
the hold which Great Britain had thus gained over Spain was somewhat
weakened by the British attitude towards the slave trade.

It is remarkable how large a space the abolition of the slave trade
occupied in the foreign policy of Great Britain, when the liberties of
Europe were at stake. During the months preceding the meeting of the
congress of Vienna, which had been postponed till September by the tsar,
British diplomacy had been engaged in a strenuous effort to obtain the
co-operation of such European powers as possessed American colonies in
securing this philanthropic object. Sweden had already consented to it,
and now Holland also gave her consent. Portugal agreed to relinquish the
trade north of the equator, on condition that the other powers consented
to impose a similar restriction on themselves. Strong pressure was
brought to bear upon France to consent to the immediate abolition of the
trade, and Wellington, who had been created a duke in May and who
arrived at Paris in August in the capacity of British ambassador, was
authorised by Liverpool to offer the cession of Trinidad or the payment
of two or three million pounds to obtain this end. By the treaty of
Paris only French subjects were allowed to trade in slaves with the
French colonies, and French subjects were excluded from trading
elsewhere; and the whole trade was to cease within French dominions
after five years. Talleyrand, negotiating with Wellington, refused to
consent to a general abolition, but, on being pressed to surrender the
slave trade north of the equator, consented to abandon it to the north
of Cape Formoso. In the following year Napoleon on his return from Elba
ordered its immediate suppression, and this was not the least
significant act of the Hundred Days. With Spain our diplomatists were
less successful. The British government refused to renew its subsidy to
Spain for the last half of 1814 except o