The first result of this energetic tone was not what Pinckney had hoped. Cevallos was outwardly unmoved; Pinckney’s violence only caused him to lay aside that courtesy which was the usual mark of Spanish manners. His official notes were in outward form still civil enough, but in two or three conversations Pinckney listened to a series of remarks as blunt as though Lord Harrowby were the speaker. Pinckney reported to Madison the tenor of these rough rejoinders.[195] Cevallos told him that the Americans, ever since their independence, had been receiving the most pointed proofs of friendship and generosity from Spain, who, as was well known, received no benefit from them,--on the contrary, their commerce was extremely injurious to Spain; the Spanish government had ten times more trouble with them than with any other nation, and for his part, he did not wish to see the trade with the United States extended. Spain had nothing to fear from the United States, and had heard with contempt the threats of senators like Ross and Gouverneur Morris. The Americans had no right to expect much kindness from the King; in the purchase of Louisiana they had paid no attention to his repeated remonstrances against the injustice and nullity of that transaction, whereas if they had felt the least friendship they would have done so. They were well known to be a nation of calculators, bent on making money and nothing else; the French, and probably in the result all the nations having possessions in the West Indies, would be materially injured by them, for without a doubt it was entirely owing to the United States that St. Domingo was in its present situation. Pinckney received[196] at the same time what he called secret intelligence on which he could implicitly rely, that Cevallos meant to create indefinite delays to the ratification, for Yrujo had written that neither these nor the French spoliation claims, nor West Florida, would induce the American government to depart from its pacific system. France had indeed gone to the point of advising and even commanding Spain to relinquish her claim on Louisiana, and this was the reason why Spain had so quietly given it up; but in regard to the spoliations, France preferred not to see them paid, as the more money Spain paid America the less she could pay France, and France knew as well as Spain how little serious was the American government in the idea of abandoning its neutrality.