They
have declared that, in respecting the rights and independence of
legitimate power, they regarded as legally null and disavowed by
the principles which constituted the public right of Europe, all
pretended reforms operated by revolt and open hostilities." In
plain terms the three monarchs, claiming to rule by divine
right, reasserted their determination to interfere in the
private affairs of any state to suppress movements which seemed
to their majesties to be revolutionary. The powers had already
acted according to this program in Piedmont and Naples, and were
preparing to interfere in behalf of the Bourbons in Spain, the
Spaniards in the revolted American republics, and the Turks in
Greece when Canning came to power. To the Congress of Verona,
where these and other questions were to be considered by the
powers, Canning sent Wellington to speak for England. In
accordance with his instructions the duke stood for non-
intervention. Europe had no business to restore the Bourbon to
the throne from which the nation had thrust him; on the same
principle Greece must be allowed to fight out her own cause with
the Turk; as for the Spanish-American colonies, why they were
already lost to Spain, and England had recognized them as
independent states. France undertook to do alone for the Spanish
monarch what the Holy Alliance wished to do in the name of
Europe.
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