The treaty of Verona was a newspaper forgery. Cooper was correct in a bunch of matters including that Senator Owen put the Treaty into the 1916 Congressional Record, but Owen was at best mistaken (to be kind).
The secret treaty of Verona, so often cited by historians and statesmen as proof of the autocratic and aggresive designs of the Alliance, is now known to be a newspaper forgery, apparendy fabricated by the Lisbon correspondent of the London Morning Chronicle. The “treaty,” dated November 22, 1822, purported to demonstrate that the continental powers, with the connivance of the Papacy, plotted the overthrow of representative governments and the freedom of the press throughout Europe. After the appearance of the document in the Chronicle of June 11, 1823, Lieven, Esterhazy, Marcellus, and Werther immediately labeled it spurious and aprocryphal, and many contemporary journals followed suit. Later Chateaubriand and the other ministers who allegedly had signed it publicly repudiated the treaty. Their denials ended the controversy for a while, but twenty-three years later (April 8, 1846), the National, a Paris newspaper, repeated the anachronisms and flaws which give the forgery away; whereupon the Gazette de France (April 9, 1846), the Courrier (April 11, 1846), and the Echo français (April 11, 1846), challenged this refutation, thus renewing the debate.2
Senator Owen's claim is all over the internet but it takes several pages of scrolling to find reputable sources about the situation. For more info, see:
