cellency will abandon the bright and glorious path which lies plainly before you, for the bloody road on which the vulgar crowd of tyrants and military despots have so often trodden. I will not doubt that your Excellency will in due time render a satisfactory explanation to Colombia and to the world of the parts of your public conduct which have excited any distrust,” and so on. The lecture thus administered by the American statesman to the South American dictator was the voice of sadly disappointed expectations. Clay was probably aware that Bolivar's ambitions were by no means the greatest difficulty threatening the Spanish American republics.
Another disappointment he suffered in the failure of an effort to remedy what he considered the great defect in the Spanish treaty of 1819. In March, 1827, he instructed Poinsett, the American Minister to Mexico, to propose the purchase of Texas. But the attempt came to nothing.
In his commercial diplomacy Clay followed the ideas of reciprocity generally accepted at the time, which not only awarded favor for favor, but also set restriction against restriction. This practice of fighting restriction with equal or greater restriction was apt to work well enough when the opposite party was the one less able to endure the restriction, and therefore obliged by its necessities to give up the fight quickly. But when the restrictions were long maintained, the effect was simply that each party punished its own commerce in
