justice and public morality." In order further to curb the
aggressions of Napoleon, the Great Powers were mutually to guarantee
their possessions, thus laying the foundation of a system of public
right.[716]

This scheme clearly foreshadows the system of alliances and compromises
carried out by Castlereagh in the Treaty of Chaumont nine years later.
Pitt also assented to the Czar's proposal that the final settlement
should be guaranteed by international agreements forming a basis for the
new European polity, a suggestion in which lies the germ of the Holy
Alliance. It would be absurd to hold Pitt responsible for the strange
and unforeseen developments of the years 1815-25. But it is to be
regretted that fear of Napoleon should have obliterated his earlier aim
of forming a defensive league of the weaker States. His cure for the
evils of French domination was scarcely better than the evils
themselves. The installation of the Hapsburgs at Venice and Milan, of
Victor Emmanuel I at Genoa, of Frederick William of Prussia at
Brussels, could not permanently improve the lot of the Italian and
Belgian peoples. So soon as we formulate the question we see that, as in
1798, Pitt left their welfare out of count. He aimed merely at piling up
barriers against France, and trusted to some vague arrangement with the
Czar for safeguarding the political rights of the bartered peoples.

Pitt's reliance on the statics of statecraft rather than on the dynamics
of nationality tells against the credibility of the oft-repeated story
that he prophesied the liberation of Europe by the enthusiasm and
efforts of the Spaniards. Wellington afterwards told the Spanish
general, Alava, that Pitt, on hearing of the disaster of Ulm, made this
prophecy at a dinner party at which he (then Sir Arthur Wellesley) was
present. Difficulties of time and place militate against the anecdote,
which, moreover, is out of harmony with the sentiments expressed in
Pitt's speeches, letters, and despatches.[717] Further, his experience
of Spain was such as to inspire him with deep distrust; and, finally,
the cast of his mind was so far objective as to forbid the indulgence of
speculations on the little-known topic of nationality. Distrusting novel
theories, he sought to utilize forces of tried potency. He worked by
diplomatic methods through Governments, not through the tumultuary
efforts of peoples. Dependence on a nation so backward as the Spaniards
would have seemed to