In these conferences, so fatal to our interests, the predominance of the English minister was manifested in the highest degree. As England furnished the subsidies, she exercised very great influence over the movements of the Allies, and Lord Castlereagh's language often assumed an imperious tone. Upon the first hesitation manifested by Austria, he declared that England would no longer be security for the money borrowed by the cabinet of Vienna, if they should attempt to enter into a separate treaty; and he was supported in his design of a general unity against Napoleon by Pozzo di Borgo, who had not left his side since they had travelled together from London. In fact, he was convinced it was not possible to make a treaty with Buonaparte. What peace would there be for Europe as long as he continued to wear the French crown? Had they not for many years been engaged in a protracted and constantly recurring struggle? For this reason, upon firm conviction, he supported as a statesman the maxim adopted by the Tory party,--_The ancient territory and the ancient dynasty_. Although Lord Castlereagh held no acknowledged diplomatic office at the congress of Châtillon, he nevertheless swayed all the resolutions formed there; he was the principal author of the treaty of Chaumont, which placed the military direction of the campaign under the influence of England. It was a singular example of the power that may be exercised by a commercial and monied government over military powers, for England had hardly any soldiers engaged in this war, but by means of her subsidies alone she set in motion a million of men, and made them subservient to her national and exclusive interests. Thus it was admitted as a general principle, that France was to be reduced within her ancient limits, and the object of England was gained by our being deprived of Antwerp; her vast arsenal was no longer dangerous, and her fleet was to be divided. It may be said that the treaty of Paris in 1814, which was the consequence of the treaty of Châtillon, formed in some measure a realisation of the leading ideas of Toryism; that is to say, the re-establishment of the House of Orange, with a territory extending to our frontier; Prussia increased in strength and importance, Austria assumed a predominant position in the south of Germany, while they both served as barriers to Russia; and above all, the maritime and commercial supremacy of Great Britain, to such a degree that, in the secret treaty of 1814, Lord Castlereagh imperatively insisted on the rupture of the family compact among the various branches of the House of Bourbon, for the purpose of rendering her influence as secure over Spain as over Holland.