The first difficulties arose in Spain. The expulsion of the French had been followed by the restoration of the Spanish dynasty, and the promises of free institutions which had been used to stir up popular feeling were soon forgotten. Once {151} secure upon his throne, King Ferdinand proceeded with great vigour to suppress what elements of liberty he could discover in his dominions, and by 1822 the whole of Northern Spain was in a state of civil war and the South American Colonies were in revolt. The Holy Alliance had been contrived for just such circumstances as these. The French King sent an army into Spain to help King Ferdinand. That this was an outrage not even Castlereagh and Liverpool could deny, though it merely imitated the policy of the English Tories of 1793. They declined to join the Holy Alliance, and they addressed a strong protest to the guilty Powers. They declined, on the other hand, to go to war on behalf of one half of the Spanish people against the other. The system of Spanish government was for the Spanish people to decide. But the revolt of the Colonies gave Canning an opportunity of which he was glad to avail himself. At the earliest opportunity he formally recognized the revolutionary Governments. The establishment of a reactionary monarchy in Spain, where the issue of the civil war was in doubt, was one thing, the extension of the reaction to colonies which had set themselves completely free from their former rulers was another. There was no question here of appearing as a partisan in a domestic dispute. The Colonies were in fact independent. Was England to remain passive while they were reduced once more into subjection? Canning was resolved that if despotism were to be the rule on the Continent of Europe it should not be extended beyond those limits. He "called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old,"[189] and no one who compares the present condition of South America with that of Spain will question the wisdom any more than the expediency of his act.