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. In this England acquiesced, but Russia's attempt to
second the French in their Spanish project by military support
was stopped by Canning's threat that such an act would only
result in England's making the Spanish cause her own. "The
admission of the jurisdiction of the Holy Alliance over Europe
was a course which he deemed it vital at almost any cost to
prevent," says Hill. "The time for Areopagus and the like of
that," as Canning put it, "has gone by." And again, "What should
we have thought of interference from foreign Europe when King
John granted Magna Charta, or of an interposition in the quarrel
between Charles I. and his Parliament?" To bring his colleagues
around to his view, Canning showed them that the interference of
the Holy Alliance in the affairs of Ireland might be justified
upon the same grounds on which the argument for intervention in
Spain was based. The King, never too fond of the brilliant
commoner, whose presence in the ministry he considered scarcely
less than a personal affront, had the temerity to criticise the
policy which was so obnoxious to his fellow crowned heads. He