Lord Lyons declared to Mr. Seward:
That her majesty's government were as apprehensive as Mr. Seward himself could be, of an attempt to build upon a foundation of debts due, and injuries inflicted, by Mexico, a pretension to establish a new government in that country. Her majesty's government thought, however, that the most effectual mode of guarding against this danger would be for Great Britain, the United States, and France to join Spain in a course of action, the objects and limits of which should be distinctly defined beforehand. This certainly appeared more prudent than to allow Spain to act alone now, and afterwards to oppose the results of her operations, if she should go too far.[201]
The British government avoided beforehand the necessity of a point-blank refusal of the plan of Mr. Seward, in case the treaty should go through, by declaring that the interest on the funded debt was not the only cause of complaint, but that there remained over and above that the outrages perpetrated upon British subjects still unredressed.
Mr. Charles Francis Adams, the United States minister to England, did not approve the plan of guaranteeing the Mexican interest, and in his dispatch to Mr. Seward of November 1, 1861, he expressed his opinion rather more frankly than is usual for a minister to do in discussing an instruction from the state department.
You will permit me here, however, to make a single remark in this connection upon the importance of appearing to divest the United States of any personal and selfish interest in the action it may think proper to adopt. The view customarily taken in Europe is that their government is disposed to resist all foreign intervention in Mexico, not upon any principle, but simply because it is itself expecting, in due course of time, to absorb the whole country for its own benefit. Hence any proposal like that which I had the honor to receive, based upon the mortgage of portions of Mexican territory as security for engagements entered into by the United States, naturally becomes the ground of an outcry that this is but the preliminary to an entry for inevitable foreclosure. And then follows the argument that if this process be legitimate in one case, why not equally in all. As against Great Britain and France, it would be difficult to oppose to this the abstract principle contained in what has been denominated the Monroe Doctrine, however just in substance.[202]
While Mr. Corwin was still in negotiation with the Mexican government in reference to some method of releasing Mexico from her complications with the allied governments of Europe, the United States Senate, in reply to two successive messages of the President, passed a resolution, February 25, 1862, declaring the opinion "that it is not advisable to negotiate a treaty that will require the United States to assume any portion of the principle or interest of the debt of Mexico, or that will require the concurrence of European powers." This effectually put an end to Mr. Seward's plan.
Meanwhile Sir Charles Wyke had reopened negotiations with the Mexican government and negotiated a treaty which might have satisfied British claims, but the treaty was thrown out by the Mexican congress by a large majority, and also disapproved by the British government in view of an agreement entered into with France and Spain unknown to Sir Charles Wyke.[203]
The agreement referred to was the convention signed at London, October 31, 1861, between Spain, France, and Great Britain, in reference to the situation of affairs in Mexico and looking to armed intervention for the purpose of securing their rights. The preamble of the convention recites that the three contracting parties "being placed by the arbitrary and vexatious conduct of the authorities of the republic of Mexico under the necessity of exacting from those authorities a more efficient protection for the persons and property of their subjects, as well as the performance of the obligations contracted toward them by the republic of Mexico, have arranged to conclude a convention between each other for the purpose of combining their common action." The most important article of the convention in view of its subsequent violation by the Emperor Napoleon, was the second, which declared that:
The high contracting parties bind themselves not to seek for themselves, in the employment of coercive measures foreseen by the present convention, any acquisition of territory, or any peculiar advantage, and not to exercise in the subsequent affairs of Mexico any influence of a character to impair the right of the Mexican nation to choose and freely to constitute the form of its own government.
The fourth article, recognizing that the United States also had claims against Mexico, provided: