As a nation we have long since forgotten the part played in this crisis by Great Britain.
Canning disclosed the danger. And Rush reported that he went on to say: "Events are hourly assuming new importance and urgency, under aspects to which neither of our governments can be insensible." * * * 'He had the strongest reasons for believing that the co-operation of the United States with England, through my (Rush's) instrumentality, afforded with promptitude, would ward off altogether the meditated jurisdiction of the European powers over the new world.'
Rush, with the independence and self-assurance that have been characteristic of American diplomats, undertook to put forth the joint challenge to the world on the spot. If he had, it would have joined the forces of these two great countries in the fight for liberal government in a formal as well as merely inevitable manner. But he refused to do so on his own responsibility, because Canning at the same time would not agree immediately to recognize
