Not long after this interview Adams was notified by Baron Tuyll that the Czar, in conformity with the political principles of the allies, had determined in no case whatever to receive any agent from the Government of the Republic of Colombia or from any other government which owed its existence to the recent events in the New World. Adams's first impulse was to pen a reply that would show the inconsistency between these political principles and the unctuous professions of Christian duty which had resounded in the Holy Alliance; but the note which he drafted was, perhaps fortunately, not dispatched until it had been revised by President and Cabinet a month later, under stress of other circumstances.
At still another focal point the interests of the United States ran counter to the covetous desires of European powers. Cuba, the choicest of the provinces of Spain, still remained nominally loyal; but, should the hold of Spain upon this Pearl of the Antilles relax, every maritime power would swoop down upon it. The immediate danger, however, was not that revolution would here as elsewhere sever the province from Spain, leaving it helpless and incapable of self-support, but that France, after invading Spain and restoring the monarchy, would also intervene in the affairs of her provinces. The transfer of Cuba to France by the grateful King was a possibility which haunted the dreams of George Canning at Westminster as well as of John Quincy Adams at Washington. The British Foreign Minister attempted to secure a pledge from France that she would not acquire any Spanish-American territory either by conquest or by treaty, while the Secretary of State instructed the American Minister to Spain not to conceal from the Spanish Government "the repugnance of the United States to the transfer of the Island of Cuba by Spain to any other power." Canning was equally fearful lest the United States should occupy Cuba and he would have welcomed assurances that it had no designs upon the island. Had he known precisely the attitude of Adams, he would have been still more uneasy, for Adams was perfectly sure that Cuba belonged "by the laws of political as well as of physical gravitation" to the North American continent, though he was not for the present ready to assist the operation of political and physical laws.
Events were inevitably detaching Great Britain from the concert of Europe and putting her in opposition to the policy of intervention, both because of what it meant in Spain and what it might mean when applied to the New World. Knowing that the United States shared these latter apprehensions, George Canning conceived that the two countries might join in a declaration against any project by any European power for subjugating the colonies of South America either on behalf or in the name of Spain. He ventured to ask Richard Rush, American Minister at London, what his government would say to such a proposal. For his part he was quite willing to state publicly that he believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain to be hopeless; that recognition of their independence was only a question of proper time and circumstance; that Great Britain did not aim at the possession of any of them, though she could not be indifferent to their transfer to any other power. "If," said Canning, "these opinions and feelings are, as I firmly believe them to be, common to your government with ours, why should we hesitate mutually to confide them to each other; and to declare them in the face of the world?"
Why, indeed? To Rush there occurred one good and sufficient answer, which, however, he could not make: he doubted the disinterestedness of Great Britain. He could only reply that he would not feel justified in assuming the responsibility for a joint declaration unless Great Britain would first unequivocally recognize the South American republics; and, when Canning balked at the suggestion, he could only repeat, in as conciliatory manner as possible, his reluctance to enter into any engagement. Not once only but three times Canning repeated his overtures, even urging Rush to write home for powers and instructions.
The dispatches of Rush seemed so important to President Monroe that he sent copies of them to Jefferson and Madison, with the query—which revealed his own attitude—whether the moment had not arrived when the United States might safely depart from its traditional policy and meet the proposal of the British Government. If there was one principle which ran consistently through the devious foreign policy of Jefferson and Madison, it was that of political isolation from Europe. "Our first and fundamental maxim," Jefferson wrote in reply, harking back to the old formulas, "should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with Cis-Atlantic affairs." He then continued in this wise:
"America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it. By acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the band of despots, bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government and emancipate a continent at one stroke which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty.... I am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that it will prevent, instead of provoking war. With Great Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war.... Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of nations, by the interference of any one in the internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Buonaparte, and now continued by the equally lawless alliance, calling itself Holy."
Madison argued the case with more reserve but arrived at the same conclusion: "There ought not to be any backwardness therefore, I think, in meeting her [England] in the way she has proposed." The dispatches of Rush produced a very different effect, however, upon the Secretary of State, whose temperament fed upon suspicion and who now found plenty of food for thought both in what Rush said and in what he did not say. Obviously Canning was seeking a definite compact with the United States against the designs of the allies, not out of any altruistic motive but for selfish ends. Great Britain, Rush had written bluntly, had as little sympathy with popular rights as it had on the field of Lexington. It was bent on preventing France from making conquests, not on making South America free. Just so, Adams reasoned: Canning desires to secure from the United States a public pledge "ostensibly against the forcible interference of the Holy Alliance between Spain and South America; but really or especially against the acquisition to the United States themselves of any part of the Spanish-American possessions." By joining with Great Britain we would give her a "substantial and perhaps inconvenient pledge against ourselves, and really obtain nothing in return." He believed that it would be more candid and more dignified to decline Canning's overtures and to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France. For his part he did not wish the United States "to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war!"
Thus Adams argued in the sessions of the Cabinet, quite ignorant of the correspondence which had passed between the President and his mentors. Confident of his ability to handle the situation, he asked no more congenial task than to draft replies to Baron Tuyll and to Canning and instructions to the ministers at London, St. Petersburg, and Paris; but he impressed upon Monroe the necessity of making all these communications "part of a combined system of policy and adapted to each other." Not so easily, however, was the President detached from the influence of the two Virginia oracles. He took sharp exception to the letter which Adams drafted in reply to Baron Tuyll, saying that he desired to refrain from any expressions which would irritate the Czar; and thus turned what was to be an emphatic declaration of principles into what Adams called "the tamest of state papers."
The Secretary's draft of instructions to Rush had also to run the gauntlet of amendment by the President and his Cabinet; but it emerged substantially unaltered in content and purpose. Adams professed to find common ground with Great Britain, while pointing out with much subtlety that if she believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain was really hopeless, she was under moral obligation to recognize them as independent states and to favor only such an adjustment between them and the mother country as was consistent with the fact of independence. The United States was in perfect accord with the principles laid down by Mr. Canning: it desired none of the Spanish possessions for itself but it could not see with indifference any portion of them transferred to any other power. Nor could the United States see with indifference "any attempt by one or more powers of Europe to restore those new states to the crown of Spain, or to deprive them, in any manner whatever, of the freedom and independence which they have acquired." But, for accomplishing the purposes which the two governments had in common—and here the masterful Secretary of State had his own way—it was advisable THAT THEY SHOULD ACT SEPARATELY, each making such representations to the continental allies as circumstances dictated.
Further communications from Baron Tuyll gave Adams the opportunity, which he had once lost, of enunciating the principles underlying American policy. In a masterly paper dated November 27, 1823, he adverted to the declaration of the allied monarchs that they would never compound with revolution but would forcibly interpose to guarantee the tranquillity of civilized states. In such declarations "the President," wrote Adams, "wishes to perceive sentiments, the application of which is limited, and intended in their results to be limited to the affairs of Europe.... The United States of America, and their government, could not see with indifference, the forcible interposition of any European Power, other than Spain, either to restore the dominion of Spain over her emancipated Colonies in America, or to establish Monarchical Governments in those Countries, or to transfer any of the possessions heretofore or yet subject to Spain in the American Hemisphere, to any other European Power."