The phrases which heralded the approaching Congress were curiously and disquietingly similar to those on the lips of our public men and journalists to-day when they speak of the "settlement" before us.

"The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World," which had become a remote dream when Tennyson first coined the expression in 1842, seemed in 1814 on the eve of accomplishment.

The work of the Congress was to be no less than "the reconstruction of the moral order," "the regeneration of the political system of Europe," the establishment of "an enduring peace founded on a just redistribution of political forces," the institution of an effective and a permanent international tribunal, the encouragement of the growth of representative institutions, and, last but not least, an arrangement between the Powers for a gradual and systematic disarmament.

"It seemed," writes Sir A.W.
Ward, "as if the states composing the European family, free once more to take counsel together on terms of independence, were also free to determine their own destinies."[1] The Congress of Vienna was to inaugurate a New Era.

Such of these views, however, as pointed in a democratic or nationalistic direction represented the expectations of the peoples, not the intentions of the crowned heads and diplomatists who met at the Austrian capital.