George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

The diplomacy of Spain during the year proved still less effective. Florida Blanca began with the British minister at Madrid, by affecting ignorance of the measures of the French cabinet, and assuring him ‘that his Catholic Majesty neither condemned nor justified the steps taken by France; but that, as they had been entered upon without the least concert with him, he thought himself perfectly free from all engagements concerning them.’¹ After these assertions, which were made so directly and so solemnly that they were believed, he explained that the independence of the United States would overturn the balance of power on the continent of America; and he proposed, through the mediation of his court,² to obtain a cessation of hostilities in order to establish and perpetuate an equilibrium. The offer of mediation was an offer of the influence of the Bourbon family to secure to England the basin of the St. Lawrence, with the territory north-west of the Ohio, and to bound the United States by the Alleghanies. But Lord Weymouth held it ignoble to purchase from the wreckers of British colonial power the part that they might be willing to restore; and he answered, ‘that while France supported the colonies in rebellion no negotiation could be entered into.’³ But, as both Great Britain and Spain were interested in preserving colonial dependency, he invited a closer union between them, and even proposed an alliance.