by force, to prevent the invasion of the peninsula by France. The constitution of the Cortes was overturned, and Ferdinand VII. restored to absolute power. These events were followed by the death of John VI., King of Portugal, in 1825. The constitution of Brazil had provided that its crown should never be united on the same head with that of Portugal; and Dom Pedro resigned the latter to his infant daughter, Dona Maria, appointing a regency to govern the kingdom during her minority, and, at the same time, granting a constitutional charter to the European dominions of the House of Braganza. The Spanish government, restored to the plenitude of its absolute authority, and dreading the example of the peaceable establishment of a constitutional government in a neighboring kingdom, countenanced the pretensions of Dom Miguel to the Portuguese crown, and supported the efforts of his partisans to overthrow the regency and the charter. Hostile inroads into the territory of Portugal were concerted in Spain, and executed with the connivance of the Spanish authorities, by Portuguese troops, belonging to the party of the Pretender, who had deserted into Spain, and were received and succoured by the Spanish authorities on the frontiers. Under these circumstances, the British government received an application from the regency of Portugal, claiming, in virtue of the ancient treaties of alliance and friendship subsisting between the two crowns, the military aid of Great Britain against the hostile aggression of Spain. In acceding to that application, and sending a corps of British troops for the defence of Portugal, it was stated by the British minister that the Portuguese Constitution was admitted to have proceeded from a legitimate source, and it was recommended to Englishmen by the ready acceptance which it had met with from all orders of the Portuguese people. But it would not be for the British nation to force it on the people of Portugal, if they were unwilling to receive it; or if any schism should exist among the Portuguese themselves, as to its fitness and congeniality to the wants and wishes of the nation. They went to Portugal in the discharge of a sacred obligation, contracted under ancient and modern treaties. When there, nothing would be done by them to enforce the establishment of the constitution; but they must take care that nothing was done by others to prevent it from being fairly carried into effect. The hostile

aggression of Spain, in countenancing and aiding the party opposed to the Portuguese Constitution, was in direct violation of repeated solemn assurances of the Spanish cabinet to the British government, engaging to abstain from such interference. The sole object of Great Britain was to obtain the faithful execution of those engagements. The former case of the invasion of Spain by France, having for its object to overturn the Spanish Constitution, was essentially different in its circumstances. France had given to Great Britain cause of war, by that aggression upon the independence of Spain. The British government might lawfully have interfered, on grounds of political expediency; but they were not bound to interfere, as they were now bound to interfere on behalf of Portugal, by the obligations of treaty. War might have been their free choice, if they had deemed it politic, in the case of Spain; interference on behalf of Portugal was their duty, unless they were prepared to abandon the principles of national faith and national honor.1

the Christ

The interference of the Christian powers of Europe, § 9. Interference of in favor of the Greeks, who, after enduring ages of ian powers cruel oppression, had shaken off the Ottoman yoke, of Europe, affords a further illustration of the principles of interthe Greeks. national law authorizing such an interference, not only where the interests and safety of other powers are immediately affected by the internal transactions of a particular State, but where the general interests of humanity are infringed by the excesses of a barbarous and despotic government. These principles are fully recognized in the treaty for the pacification of Greece, concluded at London, on the 6th of July, 1827, between France, Great Britain, and Russia. The preamble of this treaty sets forth, that the three contracting parties were "penetrated with the necessity of putting an end to the sanguinary contest, which, by delivering up the Greek provinces and the isles of the Archipelago to all the disorders of anarchy, produces daily fresh impediments to the commerce of the European States, and gives occasion to piracies, which not only expose the subjects of the

1 Mr. Canning's Speech in the House of Commons, 11th December, 1826. Annual Register, vol. lxviii. p. 192.

high contracting parties to considerable losses, but, besides, render necessary burdensome measures of protection and repression." It then states that the British and French governments, having received a pressing request from the Greeks to interpose their mediation with the Porte, and being, as well as the Emperor of Russia, animated by the desire of stopping the effusion of blood, and of arresting the evils of all kinds which might arise from the continuance of such a state of things, had resolved to unite their efforts, and to regulate the operations thereof by a formal treaty, with the view of reëstablishing peace between the contending parties, by means of an arrangement, which was called for as much by humanity as by the interest of the repose of Europe. The treaty then provides, (art. 1,) that the three contracting powers should offer their mediation to the Porte, by a joint declaration of their ambassadors at Constantinople; and that there should be made, at the same time, to the two contending parties, the demand of an immediate armistice, as a preliminary condition indispensable to opening any negotiation. Article 2d provides the terms of the arrangement to be made, as to the civil and political condition of Greece, in consequence of the principles of a previous understanding between Great Britain and Russia. By the 3d article it was agreed, that the details of this arrangement, and the limits of the territory to be included under it, should be settled in a separate negotiation between the high contracting powers and the two contending parties. To this public treaty an additional and secret article was added, stipulating that the high contracting parties would take immediate measures for establishing commercial relations with the Greeks, by sending to them and receiving from them consular agents, so long as there should exist among them authorities capable of maintaining such relations. That if, within the term of one month, the Porte did not accept the proposed armistice, or if the Greeks refused to execute it, the high contracting parties should declare to that one of the two contending parties that should wish to continue hostilities, or to both, if it should become necessary, that the contracting powers intended to exert all the means, which circumstances might suggest to their prudence, to give immediate effect to the armistice, by preventing, as far as might be in their power, all collision between the contending parties. The secret article concluded by declaring, that

if these measures did not suffice to induce the Ottoman Porte to adopt the propositions made by the high contracting powers; or if, on the other hand, the Greeks should renounce the conditions stipulated in their favor, the contracting parties would nevertheless continue to prosecute the work of pacification on the basis agreed upon between them; and, in consequence, they authorized, from that time forward, their representatives in London to discuss and determine the ulterior measures to which it might become necessary to resort.

The Greeks accepted the proffered mediation of the three powers, which the Turks rejected, and instructions were given to the commanders of the allied squadrons to compel the cessation of hostilities. This was effected by the result of the battle of Navarino, with the occupation of the Morea by French troops; and the independence of the Greek State was ultimately recognized by the Ottoman Porte, under the mediation of the contracting powers. If, as some writers have supposed, the Turks belong to a family or set of nations which is not bound by the general international law of Christendom, they have still no right to complain of the measures which the Christian powers thought proper to adopt for the protection of their religious brethren, oppressed by the Mohammedan rule. In a ruder age, the nations of Europe, impelled by a generous and enthusiastic feeling of sympathy, inundated the plains of Asia to recover the holy sepulchre from the possession of infidels, and to deliver the Christian pilgrims from the merciless oppressions practised by the Saracens. The Protestant princes and States of Europe, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, did not scruple to confederate and wage war, in order to secure the freedom of religious worship for the votaries of their faith in the bosom of Catholic communities, to whose subjects it was denied. Still more justifiable was the interference of the Christian powers of Europe to rescue a whole nation, not merely from religious persecution, but from the cruel alternative of being transported from their native land, or exterminated by their merciless oppressors. The rights of human nature wantonly outraged by this cruel warfare, prosecuted for six years against a civilized and Christian people, to whose ancestors mankind are so largely indebted for the blessings of arts and of letters, were but tardily and imperfectly vindicated by this measure. "Whatever," as

Sir James Mackintosh said, "a nation may lawfully defend for itself, it may defend for another people, if called upon to interpose." The interference of the Christian powers, to put an end to this bloody contest might, therefore, have been safely rested upon this ground alone, without appealing to the interests of commerce and of the repose of Europe, which, as well as the interests of humanity, are alluded to in the treaty, as the determining motives of the high contracting parties.1

§ 10. In

of Austria,

Prussia, and

the internal

Ottoman

We have already seen, that the relations which have prevailed between the Ottoman Empire and the other terference European States have only recently brought the former G. Britain, within the pale of that public law by which the latter Russia, in are governed, and which was originally founded on affairs of the that community of manners, institutions, and religion, Empire, in which distinguish the nations of Christendom from those 1840. of the Mohammedan world.2 Yet the integrity and independence of that empire have been considered essential to the general balance of power, ever since the crescent ceased to be an object of dread to the western nations of Europe. The above-mentioned interference of three of the great Christian powers in the affairs of Greece had been complicated, by the separate war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, which was terminated by the Treaty of Adrianople, in 1829, followed by the treaty of alliance between the two empires, of Unkiar-Skelessi, in 1833. The casus fœderis of the latter treaty was brought on by the attempts of Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, to assert his independence, and of the Porte, which sought to recover its lost provinces. The status quo, which had been established between the Sultan and his vassal by the arrangement of Kutayah, in 1833, under the mediation of France and Great Britain, on which the peace of the Levant depended, and with it the peace

1 Another treaty was concluded at London, between the same three powers, on the 7th of May, 1832, by which the election of Prince Otho of Bavaria, as King of Greece, was confirmed, and the sovereignty and independence of the new kingdom guaranteed by the contracting parties, according to the terms of the protocol signed by them on the 3d of February, 1830, and accepted by Greece and the Ottoman Porte.

2 Vide supra, Part I. ch. i. § 10.