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302 certain interests and certain passions demanded such a course. The Times and other newspapers pointed that way, and in the House of Commons Disraeli and Bentinck spoke on that side. "A pretence only is wanting," wrote McLane. This, however, was not precisely correct. Aberdeen told Murphy, the Mexican minister, that it would be Quixotic to take up arms on the simple ground that Mexico had been wronged; and in view of England's own course, it would also have been ridiculous. "Scinde is ours," exclaimed Britannia at about this time, thus announcing one more step in the conquest of India, "and we pay the penalty of the treachery by which it was acquired in the curse of possession." What Great Britain wanted was a substantial advantage in prospect.

For a time it looked as if California might provide this. Peel himself was rather dazzled by the idea of gaining San Francisco, and Aberdeen viewed with "the utmost repugnance," wrote Murphy, the likelihood that we should acquire the province. During the last three months of 1845 the subject was thoroughly discussed by Murphy and Aberdeen, and the latter's mind appeared to be "tormented" for a solution of the problem. The method of interposition followed in the war between Buenos Aires and Montevideo appealed to him, but he felt that France could not easily be drawn into it. The Mackintosh plan of British colonization received careful attention as possibly the means of creating a British interest in California; but Aberdeen thought it would be unbecoming, and would give the United States a just ground of offence, to put the plan in operation at so late a day, evidently for the purpose of blocking us (á propósito para las circunstancias), and he feared it would not be effective after all against American immigration. 'The Mexican decree of April, 1837, which mortgaged a certain quantity of lands (for instance, in California) to the bondholders appeared to promise better, and on that basis a scheme was actually drawn up at London in October, 1845, for submission to the government of Mexico. But at this juncture Herrera was overthrown, the British Cabinet felt profoundly disgusted, and Murphy's position became uncertain.

After Aberdeen retired from the Foreign Office in 1846, the suggestion of Paredes that Great Britain take military possession of California seems to have tempted Palmerston;