Matters stood thus when the new Spanish envoy, Vivês, arrived. Other elements, which there is not space to enumerate here, besides those referred to, now entering newly into the state of affairs, further reduced the improbability of agreement almost to hopelessness. Mr. Adams, despairing of any other solution than a forcible seizure of Florida, to which he had long been far from averse, now visibly relaxed his efforts to meet the Spanish negotiator. Perhaps no other course could have been more effectual in securing success than this obvious indifference to it. In the prevalent condition of public feeling and of his own sentiments Mr. Adams easily assumed towards General Vivês a decisive bluntness, not altogether consonant to the habits of diplomacy, and manifested an unchangeable stubbornness which left no room for discussion. His position was simply that Spain might make such a treaty as the United States demanded, or might take (p. 124) the consequences of her refusal. His dogged will wore out the Spaniard's pride, and after a fruitless delay the King and Cortes ratified the treaty in its original shape, with the important addition of an explicit annulment of the land grants. It was again sent in to the Senate, and in spite of the "continued, systematic, and laborious effort" of "Mr. Clay and his partisans to make it unpopular," it was ratified by a handsome majority, there being against it "only four votes--Brown, of Louisiana, who married a sister of Clay's wife; Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, against his own better judgment, from mere political subserviency to Clay; Williams, of Tennessee, from party impulses connected with hatred of General Jackson; and Trimble, of Ohio, from some maggot of the brain." Two years had elapsed since the former ratification, and no little patience had been required to await so long the final achievement of a success so ardently longed for, once apparently gained, and anon so cruelly thwarted. But the triumph was rather enhanced than diminished by all this difficulty and delay. A long and checkered history, wherein appeared infinite labor, many a severe trial of temper and hard test of moral courage, bitter disappointment, ignoble artifices of opponents, ungenerous (p. 125) opposition growing out of unworthy personal motives at home, was now at last closed by a chapter which appeared only the more gratifying by contrast with what had gone before. Mr. Adams recorded, with less of exultation than might have been pardonable, the utter discomfiture of "all the calculators of my downfall by the Spanish negotiation," and reflected cheerfully that he had been left with "credit rather augmented than impaired by the result,"--credit not in excess of his deserts. Many years afterwards, in changed circumstances, an outcry was raised against the agreement which was arrived at concerning the southwestern boundary of Louisiana. Most unjustly it was declared that Mr. Adams had sacrificed a portion of the territory of the United States. But political motives were too plainly to be discerned in these tardy criticisms; and though General Jackson saw fit, for personal reasons, to animadvert severely upon the clause establishing this boundary line, yet there was abundant evidence to show not only that he, like almost everybody else, had been greatly pleased with it at the time, but even that he had then upon consultation expressed a deliberate and special approval.