DEFENSE OF THE SYSTEM 273 3. THE CONFERENCES OF TROPPAU. a. CIRCULAR OF THE AUSTRIAN, PRUSSIAN AND RUSSIAN MISSIONS TO FOREIGN COURTS. 12 TROPPAU, December 8, 1820. Informed of the rumors, as extravagant as false, which the malevolence and the credulity of others have succeeded in spreading and caused to be believed on the object and results of the conferences of Troppau, the allied Courts have considered it necessary to furnish their respective missions in foreign countries authentic information so that they can be in a position to correct errors and suspicions which have been formed about them. The subjoined document is destined to fulfil this purpose. There is no question of making it the subject of any formal communication but there is nothing to prevent its being confidentially read. This same summary will be addressed to the ministers of of You will be good enough to concert with them on the precise use to make of it. Inclosure: Short summary of the first results of the conferences of Troppau. The events which took place March 8 in Spain, July 2 at Naples and the Portuguese catastrophe1 have necessarily given rise to a deep feeling 12 Translated from 8 British and Foreign State Papers, 1149-1151; Archives diplomatiques pour l'histoire du tems et des états, I, 290-297; Comte d'Angeberg (Leonard Boreyko Chodzko), Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1801. A meeting which did much to discourage liberal movements in Germany was held at Carlsbad August 6, 1819, resulting in the reactionary decrees of that date. 13 The events referred to are: On March 8, 1820, Ferdinand VII of Spain issued a rescript decreeing "that all persons who are imprisoned or arrested on account of political opinions, in any place in the kingdom whatsoever, should be set immediately at liberty. They may return to their homes, as may all those who for the same reason are abroad." March 9-17 he issued decrees establishing a cabinet, abolishing the inquisition, ordering constitutional elections for municipal authorities, granting freedom of the press and reorganizing the courts. (Archives diplomatiques, III, 107–119.) On July 2, 1820, a regiment stationed at Nola began a march to Naples under the banner of the Carbonari, a secret political society of liberal tenets. On July 7 Ferdinand I's son as viceregent ratified the Spanish constitution of 1812 for Naples. The conditions presented by the revolution were a formal oath to the constitution by the King, appointment of a junta to prepare its introduction and appointment of the revolutionary leader as commander-in-chief of the army. These terms were complied with on July 9. On August 24, 1820, the city of Oporto, Portugal, rose and formed a provisional supreme junta to rule in the name of King John VI until the Cortes was convened. Lisbon did likewise and the two juntas convoked the Cortes to revise the Spanish constitution of 1812 to meet Portuguese needs. of uneasiness and chagrin in all those who are under the obligation of watching over the tranquility of states, but at the same time has made them recognize the need of reuniting and deliberating in common upon the methods of preventing all the evils which menace the foundations of Europe. It was natural that these sentiments should make an especially keen impression upon the powers that had recently put down revolution and that had seen it again raise its head. It was not less natural that these powers, to combat it for the third time, should have recourse to the same methods of which they had made use with such success in that memorable struggle which delivered Europe from a yoke it had borne for 20 years. Everything gave ground for hoping that this alliance, founded in the most critical circumstances, crowned with the most brilliant success, affirmed by the conventions of 1814, 1815 and 1818, at the same time that it prepared, established and affirmed the peace of the world and delivered the European continent from the military tyranny of the representative of the revolution, would also be in a position to put a check on a force not less tyrannical and less detestable, that of revolt and of crime. Such were the motives and the purpose of the meeting at Troppau. The first are so evident that they require no development. The latter is so honorable and so salutary that the wishes of all good men undoubtedly will accompany the allied Courts in the noble combat they have just entered upon. The enterprise, which imposes upon them the holiest engagements, is great and difficult; but a happy presentiment makes them hope that they will attain their purpose, invariably maintaining the spirit of those treaties to which Europe owes the peace and union existing among all its states. The powers have exercised an incontestable right in commonly concerting measures of safety against the states in which an overturn of the government effected by revolt can only be considered as a dangerous example, which must have for a result an attitude hostile against all constitutions and legitimate governments. The exercise of this right of necessity became still more urgent when those in that situation sought to communicate to neighboring states the evil in which they themselves were plunged and to propagate revolt and confusion among them. There is in this attitude and this conduct an evident rupture of the part which guarantees to all the Governments of Europe, besides the inviolability of their territory, the enjoyment of peaceable relations which exclude all reciprocal encroachment on their rights. BRITISH PROTEST AT DECISIONS 275 This incontestable fact is the starting point for the allied Courts. The ministers who have been furnished at Troppau with positive instructions on the part of their Courts consequently concerted among themselves on the principles of conduct to follow toward states whose form of government had sustained violent attacks, and upon pacific or coercive measures which, in cases where it might have important effects and a salutary influence, might bring these states into the body of the alliance. The results of these deliberations have been communicated to the Courts of Paris and London in order that they can take them into consideration. As the revolution of Naples daily takes deeper root, because nothing else exposes the tranquility of neighboring states to a danger so certain and so imminent and because it is not possible to act elsewhere so immediately and promptly, we are convinced of the necessity of proceeding against the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in accordance with the principles declared above. For the purpose of preparing measures of conciliation to this end, the Monarchs in session at Troppau invited the King of the Two Sicilies to meet with them at Laibach, a proceeding whose sole purpose was to free the will of his Majesty from all external constraint and to constitute this Monarch the mediator among his separated peoples and the states whose tranquility they threaten. The allied Monarchs being resolved not to recognize a government produced by open revolt, they can enter into negotiations only with the person of the King. Their ministers and agents at Naples have consequently received the necessary instructions.... b. CIRCULAR DISPATCH TO HIS MAJESTY'S MISSIONS TO FOREIGN courts. Sir, 14 FOREIGN OFFice, I should not have felt it necessary to have made any communication to you, in the present state of the discussions begun at Troppau and transferred to Laibach, had it not been for a circular communication 14 Parl. Pap., 1821, XXII, 1; 8 British and Foreign State Papers, 1160. This dispatch was apparently published as the result of a Parliamentary discussion February 21, 1821 (Hansard, New Series, IV, 836-895), on a resolution of Sir James Mackintosh which read: "That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions, that there be laid before this House, copies or which has been addressed by the Courts of Austria, Prussia and Russia to their several missions and which his Majesty's Government conceive, if not adverted to, might (however unintentionally) convey, upon the subject therein alluded to, very erroneous impressions of the past, as well as of the present, sentiments of the British Government. It has become therefore necessary to inform you, that the King has felt himself obliged to decline becoming a party to the measures in question. These measures embrace two distinct objects: 1st, The establishment of certain general principles for the regulation of the future political conduct of the allies in the cases therein described; 2dly, The proposed mode of the dealing, under these principles, with the existing affairs of Naples. The system of measures proposed under the former head, if to be reciprocally acted upon, would be in direct repugnance to the fundamental laws of this country. But even if this decisive objection did not exist, the British Government would nevertheless regard the principles on which these measures rest to be such as could not be safely admitted as a system of international law. They are of opinion that their adoption would inevitably sanction, and, in the hands of less beneficent Monarchs, might hereafter lead to, a much more frequent and extensive interference in the internal transactions of states, than they are persuaded is intended by the august parties from whom they proceed, or can be reconcilable either with the general interest, or with the efficient authority and dignity, of independent sovereigns. They do not regard the alliance as entitled, under existing treaties, to assume, in their character as allies, such general powers, nor do they conceive that such extraordinary powers could be assumed in virtue of any fresh diplomatic transaction among the allied Courts, without their either attributing to themselves a supremacy incompatible with the rights of other states, or, if to be acquired through the special accession of such states, without introducing a federative system in Europe, not only unwieldy and ineffectual to its object, but leading to many most serious inconveniences. With respect to the particular case of Naples, the British Government, at the very earliest moment, did not hesitate to express their strong disapprobation of the mode and circumstances under which that revolution extracts of such representations as have been made on the part of his Majesty's Government to the allied powers, respecting the interpretation given by them to the treaties subsisting between them and Great Britain, with reference to the right of general interference in the internal affairs of independent states, and respecting the measures proposed to be taken by them in the exercise of such right." The resolution was lost by a majority of 69,-ayes 125, noes 194. SUSPICIONS OF AGGRANDIZEMENT 277 was understood to have been effected; but they, at the same time, expressly declared to the several allied Courts, that they should not consider themselves as either called upon, or justified, to advise any interference on the part of this country: They fully admitted however that other European states, and especially Austria and the Italian powers, might feel themselves differently circumstanced; and they professed that it was not their purpose to prejudge the question as it might affect them, or to interfere with the course which such states might think fit to adopt with a view to their own security, provided only that they were ready to give every reasonable assurance that their views were not directed to purposes of aggrandizement, subversive of the territorial system of Europe, as established by the late treaties. Upon these principles, the conduct of his Majesty's Government with regard to the Neapolitan question has been, from the first moment, uniformly regulated, and copies of the successive instructions sent to the British authorities at Naples, for their guidance, have been, from time to time, transmitted for the information of the allied Governments. With regard to the expectation, which is expressed in the circular above alluded to, of the assent of the Courts of London and Paris to the more general measures proposed for their adoption, founded, as it is alleged, upon existing treaties; in justification of its own consistency and good faith, the British Government, in withholding such assent, must protest against any such interpretation being put upon the treaties in question, as is therein assumed. They have never understood these treaties to impose any such obligations; and they have, on various occasions, both in Parliament and in their intercourse with the allied Governments, distinctly maintained the negative of such a proposition: That they have acted with all possible explicitness upon this subject, would at once appear from reference to the deliberations at Paris in 1815, previous to the conclusion of the treaty of alliance; at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818;-and subsequently in certain discussions which took place in the course of the last year. After having removed the misconception to which the passage of the circular in question, if passed over in silence, might give countenance; and having stated in general terms, without however entering into the argument, the dissent of his Majesty's Government from the general principle upon which the circular in question is founded, it should be clearly understood, that no Government can be more prepared than the British Government is, to uphold the right of any state or states to interfere, where their own immediate security or essential interests are |