phrase, is a source of serious danger to the oratorical statesman. The influence which his embittered feeling towards the administration had on Clay's conduct, was simply to make him more inaccessible to the prudential reasons which the administration had for its dilatory policy. There was indeed a fundamental difference of views between them. The administration had the Spanish treaty much at heart, and would not permit the recognition of the Spanish American republics to complicate that transaction. Clay wanted his country to possess all it could obtain, and as he thought that Florida would some time drop into the lap of the United States in any event, and as the Spanish treaty relinquished the claim to Texas, it was from his point of view the correct thing to hasten the recognition of the South American republics and thereby to defeat the Spanish treaty.
There was also a great difference of opinion as to the character of the South American revolution. Adams gives in his Diary an account of an interview between him and Clay in March, 1821, at which an interesting conversation took place.
“I regretted (he wrote) the difference between his [Clay's] views and those of the administration upon South American affairs. That the final issue of their present struggle would be their entire independence of Spain I had never doubted. That it was our true policy and duty to take no part in the contest was equally clear. The principle of neutrality in all foreign wars was, in my opinion, fundamental to the continuance of
