APPENDIX. 367 
immediate neighbor in the hour of her weakness, and to protect the Islands that 
have been founded and raised to national dignity and importance, by American 
zeal and American enterprise. It is our pecuniary and our political interest to 
do so. 
THE ENCHOACHMENTS OF ENGLAND. 
No one who has been in the least attentive to the diplomatic negotiations of our 
country, can fail to know, that the question of total political separation between 
this Continent and Europe, is one of no recent date. 
When the revolutions of the Southern Republics were in some degree quieted, 
and it became evident, after the battle of Ayacucho, that the dominion of Spain 
must cease entirely over her American colonies, the Government of the United 
States hastened to interfere, by her ministers abroad, in behalf of the independence 
of the revolted provinces. It did so, in order to prevent the useless effusion of 
blood, and to produce a pacification of this hemisphere, under which the commer- 
cial interests of our Union might be fostered, and the people of the newly emanci- 
pated regions take their place among the enlightened nations of the world. In 
these negotiations with the European powers, both Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay 
produced some of the ablest state papers that adorn the archives of our Depart- 
ment ; and it would be well to refer to them, at the present period, when the 
encroachments of England, on the flimsiest pretexts, are again beginning to be 
visible all over the world, while she is extending her sway, not only for the 
peaceful purposes of her commerce, but for empire and territory. The foundation 
of the exclusive system of our country, has been laid " in principles of morals and 
politics new and distasteful to the thrones and dominations of the Old World ;" and 
they are now, most probably, seeking with slow and secret advance, to regain, by 
gradual and unheeded progress, what the political ferments of Europe, at an earlier 
period, forced them to abandon. 
In the summer of 1825, a large French fleet visited the American seas and the 
coast of the United States. The purpose of this armament was unknown. But 
the watchful statesmen of those days regarded a visit of that character with jealous 
eyes ; and the Minister of the United States at the Court of Paris was immediately 
directed by Mr. Clay, to inform the Cabinet to which he was accredited, that any 
such movements, made in time of peace, ought hereafter to be notified to us, 
Mr. Brown was instructed, at the same time, to call the attention of the French 
Government to the condition of the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico ; and it was 
distinctly intimated, that inasmuch as we were altogether contented with the 
present ownership of these possessions, " we could not consent to their occupation 
by another European power than Spain, under any contingency whatever." A sim- 
ilar communication. was made about the same time to Mr. Canning ; and it is known 
that these frank and amicable representations were heedfully respected by the 
Governments both of England and France. The real purposes of the French 
fleet of 1825 are still utterly unknown ; but the idea that its object was the occu- 
pation of Cuba and Porto Rico gained considerable ground, from the current rumor 
of the day, the weakness of Spain, the revolted conditioii of her provinces, the 
intimate alliance between that monarchy and France, and " the disproportionate 
extent of the armament to any ordinary purposes of peaceful commerce." 
