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The doctrines of Laybach were not limited to any continent. Spain had colonies in America, and having reformed Spain herself to the true standard, it was not impossible that they might see fit to complete the work by reconciling, in their way, the colonies to the mother country.
I say that the will of the people must prevail, when it is ascertained; but there must be some legal and authentic mode of ascertaining that will; and then the people may make what government they please. Was that the doctrine of Laybach? Was not the doctrine there held this, that the sovereigns should say what changes shall be made?
The circular despatch addressed by the sovereigns assembled at Laybach, in the spring of 1821, to their ministers at foreign courts, alleges, "that useful and necessary changes in legislation and in the administration of states ought only to emanate from the free will and intelligent and well-weighed conviction of those whom God has rendered responsible for power.
"Useful and necessary changes in legislation and administration," says the Laybach Circular of May, 1821, "ought only to emanate from the free will and intelligent conviction of those whom God has rendered responsible for power; all that deviates from this line necessarily leads to disorder, commotions, and evils far more insufferable than those which they pretend to remedy."
In January, 1821, they met Ferdinand I. at Laybach and then took arms against Naples. Naples capitulated on the 20th of March, and on the 24th of March, 1821, its Revolutionary council was closed.
The conference then adjourned to Laybach, where they could, with greater dispatch, order the movements they had decided to take against the revolutionists of Naples. Austria, being more intimately concerned with the political condition of the Italian peninsula than either of the other two powers, was entrusted with the task of suppressing the Neapolitan revolution.
The work was left, therefore, to the Emperor of Austria. Before entering upon it, it occurred to these three to invite the King of Naples to meet them at Laybach. They knew his character.
The same Congress that made the declaration at Laybach had declared, before its removal from Troppau, "that the powers have an undoubted right to take a hostile attitude in regard to those states in which the overthrow of the government may operate as an example."
They proclaim their abhorrence of those "criminal combinations which had been formed in the eastern parts of Europe"; and, although it is possible that this denunciation was aimed, more particularly, at the disturbances in the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia, yet no exception is made, from its general terms, in favor of those events in Greece which were properly the commencement of her revolution, and which could not but be well known at Laybach, before the date of these declarations.
England held aloof from all participation in the proceedings at Troppau and Laybach though Sir Charles Stuart was present to watch the proceedings. In a circular dispatch of January 21, 1821, the British government expressed its dissent from the principles set forth in the Troppau circular. The next meeting of the allied powers was arranged for October, 1822, at Verona.
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