Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/80

1803. begged for the colony with its American privileges, and meaning to risk the chances of American hostility; but if these privileges were the cause of selling the colony to the Americans, and if, as Talleyrand implied, France could and would have held Louisiana if the right of deposit at New Orleans had been abolished and the Americans restricted to some other spot on the river-bank, fear of England was not, as had been previously alleged, the cause of the sale. Finally, if the act of Spain made the colony worthless, why was Spain deprived of the chance to buy it back?

The answer was evident. The reason why Bonaparte did not keep his word to Don Carlos IV. was that he looked on Spain as his own property, and on himself as representing her sovereignty. The reasons for which he refused to Spain the chance to redeem the colony, were probably far more complicated. The only obvious explanation, assuming that he still remembered his pledge, was a wish to punish Spain.

After all these questions were asked, one problem still remained. Bonaparte had reasons for not returning the colony to Spain; he had reasons, too, for giving it to the United States,—but why did he alienate the territory from France? Fear of England was not the true cause. He had not to learn how to reconquer Louisiana on the Danube and the Po. At one time or another Great Britain had captured nearly all the French colonies in the New World,