The Road to Vienna

Abstract

The keynote of the memorandum which Castlereagh had drafted for his own guidance at Vienna was non-intervention. This tenet had been the basis of British policy since November 1818, when Castlereagh had declared at Aix-la-Chapelle that the Alliance had no right to intervene in the internal affairs of an independent state. In this case he was referring to the question of Spain and her rebellious colonies, in which England was vitally interested. In February 1820, he reaffirmed that the allies “must not… press us to place ourselves on any ground John Bull will not maintain.” Throughout 1820 and 1821, he intoned this same theme: No nation has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another; the Alliance was not established for that purpose.² Castlereagh’s instructions for the Vienna conference, therefore, were but another application of a long established principle of British foreign policy. Castlereagh, indeed, stated that “with respect to Spain, there seems nothing to add to, or vary, in the course of policy hitherto pursued.”³

Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. — Daniel Webster.¹