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��of dollars, and that they had been sanctioQed by the date agreed upon in the late treaty. To this publication, it was added, by the rivals of the Ame- rican Secretary of State and the President, that they had suifered themselves to be deceived by the cunning and perfidious Spanish Minister, who had ceded the Floridas to them after they had lost their value, that the American citizens might be cheated out of the satisfaction they expected for their losses, from the sale of these lands. It is difficult to paint the consternation which these ideas produced in that government. The Signor, the Minister of France, was the first who, induced by his desire of conciliation, endeavoured to convince me of the ne- cessity of removing the idea that I had acted with bad faith in this transaction, as was laid to my charge, by giving a declaration, which would be demanded of me by that Cabinet, in which I should set forth, that although the grants to the Duke of Alagon, Count of Punonrostro and Senor de Var- gas, were anterior to the date that we had fixed in the treaty for its confirmation, yet we had always understood that they were annulled. 1 replied to this Minister, that I could not deny that I had be- lieved these donations to have been posterior to the date fixed upon in the treaty, and that consequent- ly they were annulled; but that if they should prove to have been anterior, I had no power to invalidate them, for that the treaty had received all the legali-
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