The United States and Latin America

by John Holladay Latané

The undersigned, specially authorized to make some additions to the Treaty of the Holy Alliance, after having exchanged their respective credentials, have agreed as follows:

Article I. The high contracting parties being convinced that the system of representative government is equally incompatible with the monarchical principles as the maxim of the sovereignty of the people with the divine right, engage mutually, and in the most solemn manner, to use all their efforts to put an end to the system of representative governments, in whatever country it may exist in Europe, and to prevent its being introduced in those countries where it is not yet known.

Art. II. As it cannot be doubted that the liberty of the press is the most powerful means used by the pretended supporters of the rights of nations, to the detriment of those of Princes, the high contracting parties promise reciprocally to adopt all proper measures to suppress it not only in their own states, but also, in the rest of Europe.

Art. III. Convinced that the principles of religion contribute most powerfully to keep nations in the state of passive obedience which they owe to their Princes, the high contracting parties declare it to be their intention to sustain, in their respective states, those measures which the clergy may adopt, with the aim of ameliorating their own interests, so intimately connected with the preservation of the authority of Princes; and the contracting powers join in offering their thanks to the Pope, for what he has already done for them, and solicit his constant coöperation in their views of submitting the nations.

Art. IV. The situation of Spain and Portugal unites unhappily all the circumstances to which this treaty has particular reference. The high contracting parties, in confiding to France the care of putting an end to them, engage to assist her in the manner which may the least compromise them with their own people and the people of France, by means of a subsidy on the part of the two empires, of twenty millions of francs every year, from the date of the signature of this treaty to the end of the war.

Signed by Metternich for Austria, Chateaubriand for France, Bernstet for Prussia, and Nesselrode for Russia.[50]

Such was the code of absolutism against which England protested and against which President Monroe delivered his declaration.

The Congress broke up about the middle of December, and the following April, the Duc d'Angoulême led a French army across the Pyrenees. By October the constitutional party had been overthrown and absolutism reigned supreme once more in western Europe. In England alone was there still any semblance of constitutional government.

The Congress of Verona was the last of the joint-meetings of the powers for the discussion of the internal affairs of states. It marked the final withdrawal of England from the European alliance. Henceforth she took up a position distinctly hostile to the principles advocated by her former allies and her policy in relation to Spanish America practically coincided with that of the United States.

The great majority of the English people sympathized deeply with the constitutional movement in Spain and were ready to take up arms in support of the Spanish people. The protest of England having been disregarded by the powers at Verona, it became necessary for the cabinet, in view of the preparations going on in France for the invasion of the Peninsula, to say what they contemplated doing. In February, 1823, Lord Liverpool circulated among his colleagues a minute prepared by Canning, which gave at length the reasons, military and other, why it would be unwise for England to undertake the defense of Spain. In the first place, the war against Spain was unpopular in France, and if Great Britain should take part in the war, the French government would avail itself of the fact to convert it into an English war and thus render it popular. Second, England would have to undertake the defense of Spain against invasion by land, and her naval superiority would not materially aid the Spaniards or baffle the French. Third, the continental powers were committed to the support of France. Fourth, there was a possibility that the invasion of Spain would be unsuccessful. Fifth, on the other hand, it might meet with success, in which event France might assist Spain to recover her American colonies. Here, he says, England's naval superiority would tell, "and I should have no difficulty in deciding that we ought to prevent, by every means in our power, perhaps Spain from sending a single Spanish regiment to South America, after the supposed termination of the war in Spain, but certainly France from affording to Spain any aid or assistance for that purpose." Sixth, in case of the invasion of Portugal by France and Spain, he thought England would be in honor bound to defend her, in case she asked for aid. The military defense of Portugal would not be so difficult as a land war in Spain.[51]