Castlereagh, Wellington, and Canning. Much injustice has been done to the
first of these. For many critics have been misled by Byron's denunciation
of Castlereagh, just as others have spoken lightly of the stubborn
conservatism of Wellington, or the easy and half-cynical insouciance of
the author of the _Anti-Jacobin_. As a matter of fact, Castlereagh was by
no means an opponent of the principles of the Holy Alliance. He joined
with Russia, Austria, and Prussia as a not unwilling member of the
successive Congresses, but both he and Wellington, true to their national
instincts, sought to subordinate all proposals to the interests of Great
Britain, and to confine discussions to immediate objects, such as the
limitation of French power and the suppression of dangerous revolutionary
ideas. They were not, it is true, idealists in the sense in which
Alexander I understood the term. And yet, on the whole, both Castlereagh
and Canning did more for the principle of nationality than any of the
other diplomatists of the time. The reason why Canning broke with the Holy
Alliance, after Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, was because he discerned
something more than a tendency on the part of Continental States to crush
the free development of peoples, especially in reference to the
Latin-American States of South America. It is true that in these matters
he and his successor were guided by a shrewd notion of British interest,
but it would be hardly just to blame them on this account. "You know my
politics well enough," wrote Canning in 1822 to the British Ambassador in
St. Petersburg, "to know what I mean when I say that for Europe I should
be desirous now and then to read England." Castlereagh was, no doubt, more
conciliatory than Canning, but he saw the fundamental difficulty of
organising an international system and yet holding the balance between
conflicting nations. And thus we get to a result such as seems to have
rejoiced the heart of Canning, when he said in 1823 that "the issue of
Verona has split the one and indivisible alliance into three parts as
distinct as the constitutions of England, France, and Muscovy." "Things