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 measures, developed no machinery, and left the practical work of maintaining peace to the Quadruple Alliance.

This was a businesslike combination more to the taste of Castlereagh and the British Government. It was formulated at Chaumont, in March 1814, by Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and was confirmed with additions and modifications at various times until it received its final shape at the Second Treaty of Paris on November 20, 1815. The four Great Powers bound themselves not by a vague confession of Legitimist faith, but by specific agreements, and arranged to meet at periodic congresses to transact their business. At the first of these Congresses, held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, France was admitted to the circle and the Quadruple became the Quintuple Alliance. Castlereagh was enthusiastic over its prospects; he hailed the system of periodic congresses as 'a new discovery' in the art of government, 'at once extinguishing the cobwebs with which diplomacy obscures the horizon, bringing the whole bearing of the system into its true light, and giving to the counsels of the Great Powers the efficiency and almost the simplicity of a single State'.

But the single State was not so simple as he thought. It depended for its continuance upon a common will, and that common will could only be found in a compromise between the reaction of Metternich and the comparative liberalism of Castlereagh.