lf, and
Brazil separated herself from Portugal. By 1822 European rule had been
practically swept off the American mainland, from Cape Horn to the
borders of Canada, and, except for the empire of Dom Pedro in Brazil,
the newly born nations had adopted the republican form of government
which the European monarchs despised. The spirit of unrest leaped
eastward across the Atlantic. Revolutions in Spain, Portugal, and Naples
sought impiously and with constitutions to bind the hands of their
kings. Even the distant Greeks and Serbians sought their independence
from the Turk.

Divine Right, just rescued from the French Revolution, was tottering
and had yet to test the strength of its new props, the "Holy" and the
"Quadruple" alliances, and the policy of intervention to maintain the
status quo. Congresses at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, at Troppau in 1820,
and at Laibach in 1821, decided to refuse recognition to governments
resting on such revolutions, to offer mediation to restore the old
order, and, if this were refused, to intervene by force. In the United
States, on the other hand, founded on the right of revolution and
dedicated to government by the people, these popular movements were
greeted with enthusiasm. The fiery Clay, speaker and leader of the House
of Representatives, made himself champion of the cause of the Spanish
Americans; Daniel Webster thundered forth the sympathy of all lovers of
antiquity for the Greeks; and Samuel Gridley Howe, an impetuous young
American doctor, crossed the seas, carrying to the Greeks his services
and the gifts of Boston friends of liberty. A new conflict seemed to be
shaping itself--a struggle of absolutism against democracy, of America
against Europe.

Between the two camps, both in her ideas and in her geographical
situation, stood England. Devoted as she was to law and order, bulwark
against the excesses of the French Terror and the world dominion that
Napoleon sought, she was nevertheless equally strong in her opposition
to Divine Right. Her people and her government alike were troubled at
the repressive measured by which the Allies put down the Revolution of
Naples in 1821 and that of Spain in 1823. Still more were they disturbed
at the hint given at the Congress of Verona in 1822 that, when Europe
was once quieted, America would engage the attention of Europe's
arbiters. George Canning, the English foreign minister, soon discovered
that this hint foreshadowed a new congress to be