In the first place, the movements of Russia in the North Pacific had created grave apprehensions. At the close of the first decade of the century the Russian American Company put forward a claim to the territory of the North American continent along the Pacific coast from Behring's Strait to the mouth of the Columbia River, and even to points south of the Columbia. Really this claim came into conflict only with the rights of Great Britain and Spain, but the United States, having the presentiment of its future, if not a legal claim to any part of this territory as a part of Louisiana, regarded the Russian movement with jealous discontent. And when, on September 16th, the Russian Czar issued an edict, asserting Russia's rights to the North Pacific territory from Behring's Strait to the fifty-first parallel of north latitude, it was natural that this discontent should become hostile in its nature. The Government of the United States declared its dissent from the Russian pretensions, and the matter rested momentarily with that. [Sidenote: The Holy Alliance.] At the same time the other danger was developing. The European reaction against the terrible excesses of the Revolution and the despotism of Bonaparte had assumed the form of an alliance between the Governments of the great continental states, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France, for the purpose of maintaining each by the power of all against the reappearance of revolutionary movements anywhere. Great Britain had scented in this Holy Alliance a combination of continental powers which might prove, in some degree at least, as dangerous to her continental relations as the commercial system of Bonaparte had been. There is no doubt, too, that there was a large party in England which repudiated the fundamental {124} political doctrine of the Holy Alliance Powers, the doctrine of the _jure divino_ monarchy. England had, in fact, repudiated that doctrine at the close of the seventeenth century. For these reasons the British Government had declined to enter the Holy League, and regarded it with suspicion and ill-concealed hostility. [Sidenote: The Congress at Verona.]