ate sovereigns were driven from their
thrones and constitutional governments were established. In successive
congresses at Troppau and Laybach, the three powers, Austria, Russia,
and Prussia, resolved to suppress these revolutionary movements. An
Austrian army was commissioned to carry out this policy of intervention,
as it was termed; and the King of the Two Sicilies was restored to his
uneasy throne. Neither Great Britain nor France took part in these
congresses. It now remained to chastise the revolutionists of Spain. At
the Congress of Verona in 1822, the representative of Great Britain
openly protested against any intervention in Spain. But again the three
powers, now joined by France, resolved to restore the deposed Fernando
VII. Early in the following year a French army crossed the Pyrenees and
entered Madrid. It was commonly believed that the restoration of the
monarchy was to be followed by a reduction of the revolted colonies and
a restoration of the Spanish colonial empire.

It was at this juncture that Canning, who had become the head of the
British ministry, protested against the policy of intervention and
sought for ways and means to make the protest effective. The one power
whose traditions of liberty and whose interests in this particular
seemed to be identical with those of Great Britain was the United
States. In truth, their interests were far from being identical. Two
years before, in a conversation with the British minister at Washington,
the Secretary of State, in his most uncompromising manner, had
challenged the right of Great Britain to the valley of the Columbia
River or to any part of the Pacific Coast. And so recently as April of
this critical year 1823, Adams had taken alarm at the appearance of a
British naval force off the coast of Cuba and had warned the Government
at Madrid that "the transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event
unpropitious to the interests of the United States." At the same time
Adams stated his conviction that within half a century the annexation of
Cuba to the United States would be "indispensable to the continuance of
the Union itself." Coupled with this prophecy was the equally frank
assurance that the United States desired to have Cuba and Porto Rico
"continue attached to Spain"--for the present.

[Map: Russian Claims in North America]

It was in midsummer of this year, too, that Adams protested against the
ukase of the czar which had asserted the claim of