It was not definitely closed until the next year, and then through the action of the United States, taken in association with Great Britain. For when France had performed her task, she looked forward to taking some of the Spanish colonies as indemnity for her expenses. The principle of federation among the Powers was working so well that it was considered only a natural thing to call another conference at which France could be assigned the right of conquering the colonies. Canning, at the head of the British government, was genuinely alarmed. The four united Powers were willing to defy Great Britain if she stood alone. He turned to the United States as the only ally in sight. Would we support him in opposition to the designs of the Powers? President Monroe, influenced by John Quincy Adams’ stout patriotism, replied in the affirmative and went a step further; for he insisted that the defiance of the Powers should be announced in Washington, not as a mere expedient to meet an isolated case, but as a general policy of our government. The Monroe Doctrine was one of the things that broke up the Quintuple Alliance, already weakened by the alienation of Great Britain. The last blow was the revolution in France in 1880, which drove the Bourbon king into exile and made a liberal government possible. At the same time so strong were the manifestations of republicanism in other countries that the old conservatism was lowered in tone and chastened in pride. From France the revolutionary movement passed into Belgium, which the Congress of Vienna had decreed should be a part of the kingdom of the Netherlands. So completely was the revolution successful that even the Great Powers had to bow to it, and in a congress at London they recognized Belgium as a separate state and saw it set up a liberal constitution with a king at the head of the government. Several of the small German governments also adopted more liberal forms. Poland broke into rebellion and before its power of resistance was crushed by Russia the infection spread into Lithuania and Podolia. At last the arms of the tsar overpowered all resistance and peace reigned; but the reactionaries were sobered, and the dream of a league to enforce repression passed away. Glancing backward we may see through what a development the ideas of reform had passed. Europe, distressed by the wars of 1800-1815, had hungered for peace. Having issued from a decade of discussion of liberty and humanity, the friends of freedom were more than ordinarily earnest for replacing war by an age of reason. In our own day the cause of universal peace stands on a broader and better laid foundation than a hundred years ago, but it is, perhaps, no more impressive. At any rate the philosophically inclined men of the earlier period supported Kant and Rousseau, among them, Alexander I. A considerable portion of the world believed that the outcome of the war madness then reigning must be an era of sanity.