DEBATE ON THE HOLY ALLIANCE
During this session the consideration of foreign affairs was brought before parliament by motions from Lord Grey in the lords, and by Sir James Mackintosh in the commons. The ostensible object of these motions was the production of all communications between his majesty’s government and foreign states on the concerns of Naples. In reality, however, the purpose of these motions was to elicit the minister’s sentiments concerning the conduct of the Holy Alliance, whose manifesto, recently published at Troppau, had excited feelings of alarm among all the friends of constitutional liberty throughout Europe. In his speech Lord Grey adverted to a document published at Hamburgh, purporting to be a circular of the allied powers, in which a claim was set up of a general superintendence over European states, and the suppression of all changes in their internal administration, hostile to what the alliance deemed legitimate principles of government. These monarchs, his lordship said, had assumed the censorship of Europe; sitting in judgment on the internal transactions of other states, and even taking on themselves to summons before them an independent sovereign, in order to pronounce sentence on a constitution which he had given to his country. Ministers, in their defence, said that our government was in no respect a party to the league; and the motion for the production of the papers was negatived. When the declaration against Naples arrived, however, the subject was renewed by a motion made by Lord Lansdowne, for an address to his majesty for a remonstrance with the allied powers. But this was met by the pretext of a strict neutrality adopted by Great Britain; and Naples was left to fall into the hands of the Austrians.