THE MONROE DOCTRINE 313 



by their anti-liberal doctrines, declared they would never 

 recognize the seceded colonies until Spain herself had 

 dorie~ so. 



English sentiment had not yielded to the principles of the 

 allies. The notions of divine right were distasteful to a people 

 who had prospered for centuries under constitutional govern- 

 ment, and the principle of forcible intervention adopted by 

 the allies seemed to the English ministry to be wholly im- 

 proper. In the course adopted by the allies toward the 

 revolutionary movements in Italy, England had no interests 

 directly affected, but she had nevertheless protested against 

 the unwarrantable interference of the powers in the affairs of 

 Naples. But in the proposed movement against liberalism in 

 Spain, to be discussed by the allied agents of the powers at 

 Verona, England had a more direct and more substantial 

 interest. 



In earlier days, Spain's economic policy with her trans- 

 atlantic colonies had been a rigidly exclusive one, but during 

 their revolt, many of the tightly drawn commercial lines had 

 been cut, and old barriers of trade broken down. English 

 merchants had greatly profited thereby, and within a few 

 years they had built up a large and growing trade in South 

 America and the West Indies. In a continuance of these 

 favorable conditions lay the motive of England's action. At 

 the time of the meeting of the allies at Verona, the statesmen 

 of England had about decided to send commercial agents, if 

 not consular representatives, to the larger cities of South 

 America a course of action which ill accorded with the 

 policy of the allies toward South America. England was 

 not prepared, on the other hand, to go to the extremity of 

 recognizing the independence of the new states at once, as 

 the United States had done the previous year ; yet to prevent 

 a revival of commercial exclusion in the Spanish colonies, 

 England was willing to take decided action. England be- 

 lieved that if Spain could subdue her rebellious colonies, she 

 would be compelled at last to grant them commercial free- 

 dom ; yet influenced by representations and petitions of her 

 own commercial classes, England was perfectly willing to 



