But her dread of the effect which the independence of the United States might produce on her own colonies, mingled with some apprehensions of danger from the contest she was about to provoke, had produced an appearance of irresolution, which rendered her future course, for a time, uncertain.

In this conflict of opposite interests, the influence of the cabinet of Versailles, and the jealousy of the naval power of Britain, at length obtained the victory; and his Catholic Majesty determined to prevent the reannexation of the United States to their mother country; but to effect this object by negotiation rather than by the sword.
[Sidenote: Spain offers her mediation to the belligerent powers.] In pursuance of this pacific system, he offered his mediation to the belligerent powers.

This proposition was readily accepted by France; but the minister of his Britannic Majesty evaded any explicit arrangements on the subject, while he continued to make general verbal declarations of the willingness of his sovereign to give peace to Europe under the mediation of his Catholic Majesty.

In consequence of these declarations, the Spanish minister proposed a truce for a term of years, and that a congress of deputies from the belligerent powers should assemble at Madrid to adjust the terms of a permanent treaty; into which deputies from the United States were to be admitted, as the representatives of a sovereign nation.

Although an explicit acknowledgment of their independence was not to be required, it was to be understood that they should be independent in fact, and should be completely separated from the British empire.
This negotiation was protracted to a considerable length; and in the mean time, all the address of the cabinet of London was used to detach either France or the United States from their alliance with each other.