The Whigs protested warmly against this infamous disposition of the affairs of unconsenting peoples. Particular acts, in particular the partition of Poland, it was not in the power of England to prevent. But that was no reason why she should give them her formal sanction. "England," said the young Lord John Russell, "might have appeared as a member of a confederacy to oppose France without sanctioning any of those acts of pillage by which the deliverance of Europe has been disgraced. If she was not able to prevent those acts, she need not have soiled her fair fame by appearing to countenance them."[170] But other matters were entirely within the control of England. She had entered into a treaty with Russia and Sweden, by which she bound herself not only formally to transfer Norway from Denmark to Sweden, but actually to compel the Norwegians by force of arms to submit to their new masters. Even Canning, who, though a member of the Government, held Liberal opinions in foreign affairs, declared that "if the question now was, whether consent should be given to the treaty, he had no hesitation in saying that he would refuse it."[171] Wilberforce "considered the partitioning of States against their will a most despotic sacrifice of public rights."[172] Lord Grenville appealed "to the old-established and true principles of national law in opposition to the new-fangled doctrine of utility, or, in other words, the subversion of all moral principle," and denounced "the horrible injustice by which an unoffending people were to be bent to the dominion of a foreign power."[173] Grey expressed the complete Liberal theory. "The principles are the same in the one case and the other, whether between individuals or {141} between States. No matter to what degree the impunity of power might silence the claims of right, its nature cannot be altered; it is equally sacred, equally important, and is equally to be recognized, in every attempt to protect the weak against the strong.... The rights of the Sovereign over his subjects are not the rights of property. They do not confer the privilege of transferring them from one to another like cattle attached to the soil.... The Sovereign might withdraw himself from their protection. He might absolve them from their allegiance to himself; but he had no right to transfer their allegiance to any other State. It became, then, the right of the people to decide to whom their allegiance should be given."[174] He dealt in fitting terms with the contention that it was after all for the benefit of the Norwegian people. "Can it be argued," he asked, "that any country shall be obliged to accept what a foreign State thinks proper to consider as happiness? No sort of tyranny can, in my judgment, be conceived more complete than that a Government should undertake to force another people to submit to that system which such Government may regard as happy, although that people may