Secret treaty of Verona suppressed popular government in the American republics from Monroe Doctrine

Secret Treaty of Verona 1822
SECRET TREATY OF VERONA:

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE. 64th CONGRESS, 1st SESSION VOLUME 53, PART 7 Page 6781 25 April 1916

I wish to put in the RECORD the secret treaty of Verona of November 22, 1822, showing what this ancient conflict is between the rule of the few and the rule of the many.

I wish to call the attention of the Senate to this treaty because it is the threat of this treaty which was the basis of the Monroe doctrine. It throws a powerful white light upon the conflict between monarchial government and government by the people.

The Holy Alliance under the influence of Metternich, the Premier of Austria, in 1822, issued this remarkable secret document :
(American Diplomatic Code, 1778 - 1884, vol. 2 ; Elliott, p. 179.)

The CONGRESSIONAL RECORD this secret treaty, because I think it ought to be called now to the attention of the people of the United States and of the world. This evidence of the conflict between the rule of the few verses popular government should be emphasized on the minds of the people of the United States, that the conflict now waging throughout the world may be more clearly understood, for after all said the great pending war springs from the weakness and frailty of government by the few, where human error is far more probable than the error of the many where aggressive war is only permitted upon the authorizing vote of those whose lives are jeopardized in the trenches of modern war.I should like to have the senator state whether in that treaty there was not a coalition formed between the powerful countries of Europe to re-establish the sovereignty of Spain in the Republics of South and Central America? This Holy Alliance, having put a Bourdon prince upon the throne of France by force, then used France to suppress the condition of Spain, immediately afterwards, and by this very treaty gave her a subsidy of 20,000,000 francs annually to enable her to wage war upon the people of Spain and prevent their exercise of any measure of the right of self-government. The Holy Alliance immediately did not same thing in Italy, by sending Austrian troops to Italy, where the people there attempted to exercise a like measure of liberal constitutional self-government; and it was not until the printing press, which the Holy Alliance so stoutly opposed, taught the people of Europe the value of liberty that finally one country after another seized a greater and greater right of self-government, until now it may be fairly said that nearly all the nations of Europe have a very large measure of self-government. However, I wish to call the attention of the Senate to this important history in the growth of constitutional popular self-government. The Holy Alliance made its powers felt by the wholesale drastic suppression of the press in Europe, by universal censorship, by killing free speech and all ideas of popular rights, and by the complete suppression of popular government." "The Holy Alliance having destroyed popular government in Spain, and Italy, had well-laid plains also to destroy popular government in the American Colonies which had revolted from Spain and Portugal in Central and South America under the influence of the successful example of the United States.""It was because of this conspiracy against the American Republics by the European monarchies that the great English statesman, Canning, called the attention of our government to it, and our statesmen then, including Thomas Jefferson, who was still living at that time, took an active part to bring about the declaration by President Monroe in his next annual message to the Congress of the United States that the United States would regard it as an act of hostility to the government of the United States and an unfriendly act, if this coalition, or if any power of Europe ever undertook to establish upon the American continent any control of any American republic, or to acquire any territorial rights.""This is the so-called Monroe Doctrine. The threat under the secret treaty of Verona to suppress popular government in the American republics is the basis of the Monroe Doctrine. This secret treaty sets fourth clearly the conflict between monarchial government and popular government, and the government of the few as against the government on the many.

It is a part, in reality, of developing popular sovereignty when we demand for women equal rights to life, to liberty, to the possession of property, to an equal voice in the making of the laws and the administration of the laws.

This demand on the part of the women is made by men, and it ought to be made by men as well as by thinking, progressive women, as it will promote human liberty and human happiness. I sympathize with it, and I hope that all parties will in the national conventions give their approval to this larger measure of liberty to the better half of the human race".

(Senator Owen, Congressional Record 1916)