It had one curious effect, at all events. The Spanish settlements in South America had taken advantage of the distracted condition of Europe to declare their independence of the mother country. Spain appealed to the Holy Alliance to help her in regaining them, and the Alliance received the appeal favourably. But, before anything came of it, the United States put forward a famous declaration, known as the Monroe Doctrine, saying that they would not tolerate any interference, or any further colonisation, by any European Power, in either of the American Continents. Even so, Spain and the Holy Alliance might possibly have proceeded with their project had Great Britain favoured it. But Great Britain, on the contrary, was found to be not at all in its favour--for one thing her {196} own experience in attempting to bring American colonists under a home Government which they disliked had not been encouraging--so the idea of putting pressure on the Spaniards in South America was at once and finally abandoned. It could not have been undertaken with any prospect of success if two nations so dominant at sea as Great Britain and the United States were opposed to it. This Holy Alliance was formed between the three most powerful and most despotic rulers in Europe. Its essential idea was to maintain peace and order, but, as was evident from this very design of forcibly helping Spain to bring back her South American sheep into the home fold, it was peace and order according to the ideas of these despotic rulers. That is to say, that its ideals were in no accord with the spirit of freedom which had been let loose by the French Revolution, and was still working throughout the world, although for the moment it had lost some of its vitality because of the alarm excited by the extreme violence of that Revolution. Both the allied Emperors had within their boundaries peoples over whom they held a sovereignty by force, and much against the will of the governed. The Russian great bear had his paw on a prostrate, but always protesting, Poland. The Austrian double-headed eagle had occasion to be on watchful guard in two directions, both east and south-west. The rulers of all the States of Italy held their governments virtually under Austrian direction, and by none, except perhaps the Pope, whom she had been influential in restoring to his Papal States, was she beloved. [Sidenote: Austro-Hungarian War]