The message of President Monroe was received in England with enthusiastic congratulations. It was upon all tongues; the press was full of it; the securities of Spanish America rose in the market; the agents of Spanish America were happy.[630] Brougham exclaimed in Parliament, that “no event had ever dispersed greater joy, exultation, and gratitude over all the freemen in Europe.”[631] Mackintosh rejoiced in the coincidence of England and the United States, “the two great English commonwealths,--for so he delighted to call them; and he heartily prayed that they might be forever united in the cause of justice and liberty.”[632] The Holy Alliance abandoned their purposes on this continent, and the independence of Spanish America was established. Some time afterwards, on the occasion of assistance to Portugal, when Mr. Canning felt called to review and vindicate his foreign policy, he assumed the following lofty strain: this was in the House of Commons, 12th December, 1826:-- “It would be disingenuous not to admit that the entry of the French army into Spain was, in a certain sense, a disparagement, an affront to the pride, a blow to the feelings of England.… But I deny, that, questionable or censurable as the act might be, it was one which necessarily called for our direct and hostile opposition. Was nothing, then, to be done?… If France occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz? No. I looked another way. I sought materials of compensation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, I resolved, that, if France had Spain, it should not be Spain ‘with the Indies.’ _I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old._”[633] If the republics of Spanish America, thus summoned into independent existence, have not contributed the weight thus vaunted, the growing power of the United States is ample to compensate deficiencies on this continent. There is no balance of power it cannot redress. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, 1835. With De Tocqueville we come among contemporaries removed by death. He was born at Paris, 29th July, 1805, and died at Cannes, 16th April, 1859. Having known him personally, and seen him at his castle-home in Normandy, I cannot fail to recognize the man in his writings, which on this account have a double charm.