Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/297

278 Godoy pacified Bonaparte, who stood in need of Spanish support. From the moment Pinckney begged in vain for help from the French ambassador at Madrid, although the need of aid increased from day to day. Just as his first and least important point, the withdrawal of Yrujo's protest, was gained at Madrid, the Government at Washington created new difficulties about his path. At the moment when Beurnonville, Talleyrand, and Pinckney wrung from King Charles his adhesion to the Louisiana treaty, the Senate at Washington, Jan. 9, 1804, ratified the Spanish claims convention, which had been negotiated by Pinckney nearly eighteen months before, and had been held an entire year under consideration by the Senate. The last article of this convention provided, as usual with such instruments, that it should have no effect until ratified by both parties, and that the ratifications should be exchanged as soon as possible. So far from performing its part of the contract, the Senate had at one moment refused to ratify at all, and after reconsidering this refusal, had delayed ratification an entire year, until the relations of the two parties had been wholly changed. The idea that the King of Spain was bound to ratify in his turn, implied excessive confidence in his good-nature; but Madison, in sending the ratified treaty to Pinckney, suggested no suspicion that Charles IV. might have changed his mind, and gave not a hint to Pinckney of the course to be followed in such a contingency. The Mobile Act had not yet become law, and Yrujo