But just because it bound its signatories to act on certain vague principles for no well-defined ends, it was bound to become the mockery of diplomatists trained in an older school. Metternich, for instance, called it a "loud sounding nothing"; Castlereagh "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense," while Canning declared that for his part he wanted no more of "Areopagus and the like of that." What happened on this occasion is what ordinarily happens with well-intentioned idealists who happen also to be amateur statesmen. Trying to regulate practical politics, the Holy Alliance was deflected from its original purpose because its chief author, Alexander I, came under the influence of Metternich and was frightened by revolutionary movements in Italy and within his own dominions. Thus the instrument originally intended to preserve nationalities and secure the constitutional rights of people was converted into a weapon for the use of autocrats only anxious to preserve their own thrones. Nevertheless, though it may have been a failure, the Holy Alliance did not leave itself without witness in the modern world. It tried to regulate ordinary diplomacy in accordance with ethical and spiritual principles; and the dreaming mind of its first founder was reproduced in that later descendant of his who initiated the Hague propaganda of peace. FAILURE "These things were written for our ensamples," and we should be foolish indeed if we did not take stock of them with an anxious eye to the future. The main and startling fact is that with every apparent desire for the re-establishment of Europe on better lines, Europe, as a matter of fact, drifted back into the old welter of conflicting nationalities, while the very instrument of peace--the Holy Alliance--was used by autocratic governments for the subjection of smaller nationalities and the destruction of popular freedom. It is accordingly very necessary that we should study the conditions under which so startling a transformation took place. Even in England herself it cannot be said that the people were in any sense benefited by the conclusions of the war. They had borne its burdens, but at its end found themselves hampered as before in the free development of a democracy. Meanwhile, Europe at large presented a spectacle of despotism tempered by occasional popular outbreaks, while in the majority of cases the old fetters were riveted anew by cunning and by no means disinterested hands. A DECEPTIVE PARALLEL