Spain had been advised meanwhile to rule her new Louisiana territory with great liberality--in fact, to let it shine as a republic before the yearning eyes of the oppressed Americans, so that the English colonists would arise and cast off their fetters.

Once the colonies had freed themselves from England's protecting arm, it would be a simple matter for the Bourbons to gather them in like so many little lost chicks from a rainy yard.

The intrigants of autocratic systems have never been able to understand that the urge of the spirit of independence in men is not primarily to break shackles but to STAND ALONE and that the breaking of bonds is incidental to the true demonstration of freedom.

The Bourbons and their agents were no more nor less blind to the great principle stirring the hearts of men in their day than were the Prussianized hosts over a hundred years later who, having themselves no acquaintance with the law of liberty, could not foresee that half a world would rise in arms to maintain that law.
When the War of Independence had ended, the French Minister, Vergennes, and the Spanish Minister, Floridablanca, secretly worked in unison to prevent England's recognition of the new republic; and Floridablanca in 1782 even offered to assist England if she would make further efforts to subdue her "rebel subjects." Both Latin powers had their own axes to grind, and America was to tend the grindstone.

France looked for recovery of her old prestige in Europe and expected to supersede England in commerce.