THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
of course, would not remain idle. From all of which I concluded that between Spain, England, and France, active negotiations with a view to joint action were in progress, and that Spain would watch her chance to use her power to the end of erecting a monarchy in Mexico with a Spanish prince on the throne, or at least to lift the clerical party into the saddle.
This conclusion I did not, of course, communicate to Don Calderon, but I confined myself to the suggestion that such enterprises, if undertaken without an understanding among all parties interested, were apt to lead to serious misapprehensions and difficulties; whereupon he replied that, if Spain, in conjunction with France and England, should, at any time, conceive the project of interfering with the internal affairs and governmental institutions of the Mexican Republic, she would endeavor to come to an understanding with the United States, and we might rely on her frankness and loyalty. But at present she entertained no such project.
The newspapers of the capital were enthusiastic in their advocacy of the enterprise. There was “glory” in it. The tone of the ministerial press left no doubt that the Spanish government entertained designs reaching beyond the mere collection of debts and redress of grievances; and when, after a little while, it became bruited about that England firmly insisted upon limiting the object of the joint action of the three powers to the simple enforcement of satisfaction for actual injuries, the Spanish papers furiously denounced perfidious Albion. It looked for a moment as if the alliance would fail. Then Spain would proceed alone. But England prevailed in securing the insertion in the tripartite agreement of a clause to the effect that “the high contracting parties engage not to seek for themselves, in the employment of the coercive measures contemplated by the present convention, any acquisition
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