Minister of the United States in Paris, proposing in a despatch (“as if he was serious,” writes Adams) that the government of the United States should assist the Greeks with its naval force then in the Mediterranean. Monroe expressed his sympathy with the Greeks in his message; and Daniel Webster, in January, 1824, in the House of Representatives presented a resolution to provide for the sending of an agent or commissioner to Greece, whenever the President should find it expedient. This resolution he introduced by a speech not only eulogizing the Greek cause, but also gravely and elaborately arraigning the “Holy Alliance” as a league of despotic governments against all popular aspirations towards constitutional liberty.
A nation fighting for its freedom naturally called Clay to the front. He not only supported Webster's motion, but remembering that the “Holy Alliance,” while it hung like a dark cloud over Europe, also threatened to cast its shadow upon these shores, he flung down the gauntlet by offering a resolution of his own to be called up at some future time. It declared that the American people “would not see without serious inquietude any forcible interposition of the allied powers of Europe in behalf of Spain, to reduce to their former subjection those parts of America which have proclaimed and established for themselves, respectively, independent governments, and which have been solemnly recognized by the United States.”
This was essentially in the spirit of the utter-
