Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlands


 Adams' adversary, nearly the same age, had almost as long a
record of official service as he. But Onis' career in the foreign office
at Madrid could not equal Adams' wider experience of travel, asso-
ciation, and observation. The new secretary, however, had great
respect for the capabilities of the Spaniard." He appraised his
opponent, after considerable association, in such characteristic
terms as these:
Cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his own temper, proud because he
is a Spaniard, but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pre-
tensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponent, bold and over-
bearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he
asserts or how grossly it is proved to be unfounded, his morality appears to
be that of the Jesuits as exposd by Pasal. He is laborious, vigilant, and ever
attentive to his duties; a man of business and of the world."

 The new secretary wrote to Erving on November 11, 1817, ac-
knowledging receipt of the despatches from the latter brought by
Luis Noeli," who had left Madrid about August 31. Thus before
opening negotiations with Onis, Adams had direct accounts of the
Pizarro-Erving conversations in which Erving had rejected the
Spanish proposal.
 Ih due course Onis presented orally the propositions contained
in his latest instructions. Adams rejected them, as had Erving a
similar offer. Onis then resolved to enter upon a detailed discus-
sion of limits, taking advantage of the time which must intervene
before the arrival of information on the Spanish appeal to Eng-
land and France for aid. On returning home the very day he had
seen Adams, December 1, he found the letter he awaited. It was an
instruction from Pizarro, saying that the British minister at Wash-
ington would suggest mediation, on the condition that it should
be requested by both parties." Onis in his reply declared em-
phatically that he hoped the negotiation might be moved back
to Madrid, explaining the difficulty of diplomatic intercourse at
Washington, where the executive had to refer to public opinion
at every step, and where any correspondence which it suited the
administration to reveal was promptly published on request from
Congress.
 In one of his frequent tirades on the dangers of United States
expansion, Onis discussed Monroe's message of December 2, 1817,