318 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



being known to hold the same opinion would, by its moral effect, 

 put down the intention on the part of France, if she entertained 

 it. This belief was founded, he said, upon the large share of the 

 Maritime power of the world which Great Britain and the United 

 States shared between them, and the consequent influence which 

 the knowledge of their common policy on the question involving 

 such important maritime interests, present and future, could not 

 fail to produce on the rest of the world. 



Without instructions from home, Mr. Rush did not feel 

 at liberty to commit himself upon so important a matter. 

 Several days after this conversation, Mr. Canning wrote to 

 Mr. Rush that his government had nothing to conceal on 

 the subject. It conceived the recovery of the colonies by 

 Spain to be hopeless, and the recognition of them to be a 

 question only of time and circumstance. He asserted that 

 the English Government was "by no means disposed to 

 throw any impediment in the way of an arrangement between 

 them and the mother country by amicable negotiations." 

 England, he maintained, desired for herself no part of their 

 territory, but he added, " it could not see any part of them 

 transferred to any other power with indifference." 



Such being England's views, urged Mr. Canning, why 

 not, if the United States acceded, publish them to the world ? 

 " A proceeding of such a nature," he continued, " would be 

 at once the most effectual and the least offensive mode of 

 intimating the joint disapprobation of Great Britain and the 

 United States of any projects which might be cherished by 

 any European power, of a forcible enterprise for reducing 

 the colonies to subjugation on the behalf or in the name of 

 Spain ; or of the acquisition of any part of them to itself by 

 cession or by conquest." Mr. Canning supplemented his 

 note by another a few days later, calling Mr. Rush's atten- 

 tion to the fact that additional reasons for haste had devel- 

 oped. France expected shortly to accomplish her military 

 objects in Spain, and notice had been sent to England that 

 when this was done " a proposal would be made for a Con- 

 gress in Europe, or some other concert and consultation, 

 specifically on the affairs of South America." 



