From Congress System to Concert of Europe

Abstract

The secret treaty of Verona, so often cited by historians and statesmen as proof of the autocratic and aggresive designs of the Alliance, is now known to be a newspaper forgery, apparendy fabricated by the Lisbon correspondent of the London Morning Chronicle. The “treaty,” dated November 22, 1822, purported to demonstrate that the continental powers, with the connivance of the Papacy, plotted the overthrow of representative governments and the freedom of the press throughout Europe. After the appearance of the document in the Chronicle of June 11, 1823, Lieven, Esterhazy, Marcellus, and Werther immediately labeled it spurious and aprocryphal, and many contemporary journals followed suit. Later Chateaubriand and the other ministers who allegedly had signed it publicly repudiated the treaty. Their denials ended the controversy for a while, but twenty-three years later (April 8, 1846), the National, a Paris newspaper, repeated the anachronisms and flaws which give the forgery away; whereupon the Gazette de France (April 9, 1846), the Courrier (April 11, 1846), and the Echo français (April 11, 1846), challenged this refutation, thus renewing the debate.²

The issue of Verona has split the one and indivisible Alliance into three parts as distinct as the Constitutions of England, France, and Muscovy…. Villéle is a minister of thirty years ago — no revolutionary scoundrel: but constitutionally hating England, as Choiseul and Vergennes used to hate us — and so things are getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation for itself and God for us all. Only bid your Emperor [Alexander] be quiet, for the time for Areopagus and the like of that is gone by.

Canning, January 3, 1823.¹