Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlads 139

 Two other weapons of diplomatic pressure were mentioned in
Erving's letter. One, the menace of a recognition of the Spanish
American republics, had been rendered innocuous by the telling
defeat (115 votes to 45) of Clay's measure for sending a diplomatic
representative to Buenos Aires. The second, a threat to break off
relations, Erving had discarded as too hazardous unless he should
have instructions from Washington to use it.
 In the same despatch Erving gave Adams his opinion of the man
with whom the latter was to arrange the treaty:
... tho Mr Onis was a much better minister to treat with than Mr Cevallos,
with whom it wond [aeo] have been impossible ever to have settled any one
point, yet he is much inferior to Mr Pisarro, for this last has a cool head, more
forecast, & the best dispositions; besides that his influence is daily augment-
ing so that what he may not be able to do to day, he might effect a week
hence: -whereas Mr Onis besides being tied down to hs instructions, is un-
accommodating from temper, bs views are limited, he is in a state of constant
irritation, & is living as you say in the time of Ferdinand the Catholiek [the
patron of Columbus] & not in that of Ferdinand the 7th; add to this he does
not toneh & feel as Mr Pisarro does the affairs of Europe, so that I fear that
you will have a great deal of further trouble before you an come to an accord
with him.

Erving was no doubt well qualified to speak on Onis' character, hav-
ing known him in the foreign office prior to 1810 and in Washington
in 1815. The Spaniard would appear to a less biased observer,
though, "unaccommodating" not from temper but from conscience.

 EXCFTN MIDSUMMER DAYS IN WASHINGTON
It has been seen that by the time Onis appealed for further instruc-
tions in March the irritating Florida venture was becoming a seri-
ous international incident. Until the arrival of the awaited orders
from Spain, his work was largely to study, report on, and protest
the events on the border.
 Onis went to his country place at Bristol in mid-June. His first
act there was to transmit a protest (not the first) to Adams, as well
as a despatch to Pizarro, on Jackson's seizure of St. Marks. His
account of the report sent by the Spanish governor of West Florida
from Pensacola indicates the state of affairs in that province and
explains why Jackson advanced so easily:
Governor Masot eonludes his report by telling me that that city has been
since the session of Louisiana to the United States so completely ruined that