DAT ATON’S FOREIGN POLICY, 
In Spain Kinz Ferdinand VII, had fallen into the hands of 
the Liberals in his old age, and had changed the line of Suc- 
cession, so as to allow his daughter Isabella to Spain and 
reign instead of his bigoted and reactionary  Dortakal, 
brother Don Carlos. In Portugal a civil war was 
taging, which ultimately terminated in the expulsion of the 
usurper Dom Miguel and the triumph of the constitutional 
Queen Maria. Her cause was successful mainly owing to 
English and French support, the turning-point of the war having 
been a naval battle off Cape St. Vincent, where the skill of 
Admiral Napier enabled the small fleet of Donna Maria to 
annihilate a Miguelite squadron of more than double his force, 
All Western Europe was, in 1833, more or less freed from the 
Yoke of the alliance of the despotic monarchs, though in Spain 
‘he struggle was to linger on for more than seven years and to 
°ause almost as much misery as the Peninsular War. "The 
las Partisans of Don Carlos did not lay down their arms 
El. 1840, and the cruelties perpetrated on both sides had been 
Worthy of Soudanese dervishes or Kurdish irregulars. 
On the whole, the foreign policy of the Whig Government 
Was very successful ; the last fears of the domination of Europe 
by despotism passed away, and Lord Palmerston, „4 
the able Canningite convert who managed our Palmerston’s 
Sxternal relations, won a reputation for skill and Dalie 
decision which was destined to make him the BE 
almost inevitable Foreign Secretary of all the Whig Govern- 
Ments of the next thirty years. He was, indeed, far the most 
°apable of the Whig statesmen of his generation, and a much 
More notabhle figure than the four prime ministers under whom 
de served, A bluff, hearty man, full of a genial self-confidence, 
and always determined that England should have her say in 
any European question that was pending, he was looked upon 
by his contemporaries as the ideal exponent of a “ spirited 
(oreign Policy,” We shall see that sometimes, as his opponents 
3necred, “ his bark was worse than his bite ;” but on the whole