324 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



Our cooperation is due to ourselves and to the world; and whilst 

 it must ensure success in the event of an appeal to force, it doubles 

 the chance of success without that appeal. . . . 



In November (1823) the cabinet meetings began, and it 

 may well be imagined that the principal topic of interest was 

 the subject of the Holy Alliance and its suspected Western 

 schemes ; just how to express the defiance of the United 

 States in the most judicious and practical manner, brought 

 forth considerable divergence of opinion. 



In the cabinet were John Quincy Adams, Secretary of 

 State, Calhoun, Southard and Wirt. Mr. Calhoun advised 

 following the advice of Jefferson, and giving to Mr. Rush 

 discretionary powers to join with Great Britain in the decla- 

 ration referred to. To this proposition Adams vigorously 

 objected, in which opinion he was supported by the Presi- 

 dent, who, according to Mr. Adams' own diary, "was averse 

 to any course which should have the appearance of taking a 

 position subordinate to that of Great Britain." Mr. Monroe 

 then suggested the idea of sending a special representative 

 to the proposed congress of the allies to protest against all 

 interference in South America, but this plan found no favor 

 in the cabinet. On November 13, Adams entered in his 

 diary : 



I find him yet altogether unsettled in his own mind as to the 

 answer to be given to Mr. Canning's proposals, and alarmed far 

 beyond anything that I could have conceived possible, with the 

 fear that the Holy Alliance are about to restore immediately all 

 South America to Spain. Calhoun stimulates the panic, and the 

 news that Cadiz has surrendered to the French has so affected the 

 President that he appeared entirely to despair of the cause of 

 South America. . . . 



To Addington, the British Minister in Washington, who 

 pressed him for an answer to Canning's proposition, the 

 Secretary said that the measure " was of such magnitude, 

 such paramount consequence as involving the whole future 

 policy of the United States . . . that the President was 



