der the Louisiana purchase. Texas was, in his opinion, much more valuable than Florida. Even if the treaty were not renewed, Florida would surely drop into our lap at last, but Texas might escape us. Lowndes answered, as to the first resolution, that, if the principle asserted by Clay were admitted in its whole breadth, the treaty-making power under the Constitution (the President and the Senate) would no longer have authority to make a treaty for a boundary rectification, which almost always involved a cession of territory on one side or the other; and, as to the second resolution, that Texas had always been considered by the United States as a debatable territory, and it had been given up as such, not as a territory clearly belonging to this Republic.
Clay's resolutions failed. The King of Spain finally ratified the treaty, the Senate reaffirmed it by all except four votes, and it was proclaimed by Monroe, February 22, 1821. But Clay had made his mark as maintaining the right of the United States to Texas. How little could he then foresee what a fateful part the acquisition of Texas was to play twenty-four years later in his public career!
The miscarriage of his opposition to the Spanish treaty did not deter him from renewing his efforts for the South American colonies. On May 20, 1820, he spoke to a resolution he had moved, declaring it expedient to provide outfits and salaries for a minister or ministers to be sent to “any of the governments in South America which have es-
