ART. III. Convinced that the principles of religion contribute most powerfully to keep nations in the state of passive obedience which they owe to their Princes, the high contracting parties declare it to be their intention to sustain, in their respective states, those measures which the clergy may adopt, with the aim of ameliorating their own interests, so intimately connected with the preservation of the authority of Princes; and the contracting powers join in offering their thanks to the Pope, for what he has already done for them, and solicit his constant cooperation in their views of submitting the nations. ART. IV. The situation of Spain and Portugal unites unhappily all the circumstances to which this treaty has particular reference. The high contracting parties, in confiding to France the care of putting an end to them, engage to assist her in the manner which may the least compromise them with their own people and the people of France, by means of a subsidy on the part of the two empires, of twenty millions of francs every year, from the date of the signature of this treaty to the end of the war. Signed by Metternich for Austria, Chateaubriand for France, Bernstet for Prussia, and Nesselrode for Russia.[50] Such was the code of absolutism against which England protested and against which President Monroe delivered his declaration. The Congress broke up about the middle of December, and the following April, the Duc d'Angouleme led a French army across the Pyrenees. By October the constitutional party had been overthrown and absolutism reigned supreme once more in western Europe. In England alone was there still any semblance of constitutional government. The Congress of Verona was the last of the joint-meetings of the powers for the discussion of the internal affairs of states. It marked the final withdrawal of England from the European alliance. Henceforth she took up a position distinctly hostile to the principles advocated by her former allies and her policy in relation to Spanish America practically coincided with that of the United States.