Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlands 115

at the time Spain asked England's view on the cession of the
Floridas. Madison, now retired, expressed the prevailing dislike
for Spain's maneuvers when he wrote to Monroe that "it proves,
as all of us suspected, that the sauciness of Spain proceeded from
her expectation of being powerfully backed in Europe.'"
 News of the refusal of the United States to request mediation
was in due course transmitted from London to Madrid. It arrived
there in time to cause the adoption of a more conciliatory tone in
the instructions to Onis which were then being prepared and which
were forwarded on April 25, 1818. Faced by the failure of plans
for British aid, Pizarro, as will be seen, was obliged to make addi-
tional concessions to the United States, and accordingly he gave
Onis authority, for the first time, to consider a boundary line west
of the Mississippi
 One effect of the British mediation incident seems to have been
a diminution in Spanish anxiety for an immediate settlement.
Erving wrote in July, 1818, that Spanish fears of a rupture with
the United States had lessened." He was no doubt right, until fur-
ther news from the Floridas arrived. And the easing of Spanish
worries may well have come from Wellesley's report to Pizarro of
the conversation at Washington. For Castlereagh had told Welles-
ley that
 The two most prominent points in the Language of the President and his
 Secretary of State may be stated to be: rst-That the subsisting diferenees
 between Spain aad the United States are not of a description to lead to war,
 and-2adly, A studied attempt to establish a Ooincidenee of Policy between
 the Proceedings of the British and the American Govt with respect to the
 Spanish Ammican Provinees in Revolt.0

 The foreign minister explained that the administration at Wash-
 ington knew of the proposed plan for a European mediation in
 the colonial revolt, and that, in the event of such a mediation, Spain
 might expect the United States to refrain from recognition.
 Spain continued to assert one of her claims for English inter-
 vention by professing to delay the offer of the Floridas to the
 United States until it was seen whether or not England would ob-
 ject under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. This was certainly
 one of the weakest bases Ferdinand's government could have
 found, and the Spanish officials could hardly have expected it to
 be accepted. Nevertheless, the gesture was made; it was officially