Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlands


the treaty was not all that could be desired, it was the best which
could have been obtained." No effective charges, in fact, were ever
made that Onis exceeded his instructions, and such an allegation
was never used in the dispute over the ratification.
 The majority of the meihbers present favored ratification, but
sufficient opposition arose to cause postponement of final action. It
is essential to note that at this time no official resistance in the Con-
sejo developed on account of the land grants. One Guillermo
Hualde, a priest who was secretary of the Consejo, bemoaned the
great concessions made, and carried his objection to the point of
saying that the treaty should not be ratified. He maintained that
the acquisition of the Floridas would only enable the United
States, in whose good pretensions he had no faith, to expand into
Cuba and the Caribbean, and that England would declare war on
Spain rather than allow such a gain by its American rival. The
Duke of Infantado (a prominent noble who had been in high posi-
tions since before the Napoleonic invasion) agreed, and insisted
that the United States should be made to promise not to invade
Spanish possessions nor to give its aid or protection to the Spanish
American insurgents.
 That the Florida cession was not to produce such resistance
from England is foreseen in a pertinent comment by Sir Henry
Wellesley, who wrote that
it is extraordinary that the ession of the Floridas should now be made a point
of difeulty when it is notorious that that session was always considered as
inevitable, and that the only obstacle which impeded the negoeation with the
Government of the United States was the settlement of the Boundaries upon
the North Western frontier. I have very little doubt however of the Treaty's
being ratifed, and the language which will be held upon the oceeaion of its
ratification will be that the King could not in honor refuse to abide by a
Treaty which had been signed by his Plenipotentiary but that he so much
disapproved its conditions that he had disgraced those of his Miniter ...
who had prepared and issued the instructions under which it was negotiated."
 Both Wellesley and Erving sensed at this time some uneasiness
 outside the ranks of the Consejo over the status of the grants which
 had been made in Florida by Ferdinand to his favorites just previ-
 ous to the cession, an uneasiness which was confirmed by subse-
 quent developments in Washington. And the whole Spanish court
 was growing irritated at the manner in which the new minister,
 Forsyth, conducted himself.