Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/248

236 the impotent forces of the Federal government; that Mexico was to be assailed, in co-operation with the English fleet, by troops to be disembarked at Tampico or thereabout; and that the revolutionized Spanish possessions would be made republics.

To reveal such a plan was to destroy its chance of success; and in thus presenting himself before the Spanish minister Dayton appeared as a traitor not only to the Union, but also to the conspirators with whom he was engaged. Such a character was not likely to create confidence. Yrujo instantly saw that Burr stood behind Dayton; that England could not have encouraged the conspiracy, for, had she done so, the conspirators would never come to beg a few thousand dollars from Spain; and that the Mexican scheme, if it ever existed, must have been already abandoned, or it would not have been revealed. Dismissing the ex-senator with civility and a promise to talk with him further, Yrujo wrote to his Government a long account of the interview. He pointed at once to Clark as the person through whom Burr drew his information about Mexico. Yrujo was perplexed only by Jefferson's apparent blindness to the doings in the West. The marquis was a Spaniard; and for twenty years the people of the United States had talked of Spaniards with contempt. Even Jefferson freely assumed their faithlessness and paltriness; but surely if Yrujo had cared to concentrate in a few words his opinion of American political character, no American could have wondered if these