“In any case,” said he, “the Court of Madrid would appear to have no ground for the fear it shows that the United States may make use of their possession of Louisiana in order to form settlements on the northwest coast of America. Whatever boundary may be agreed upon between Spain and the United States, the line will necessarily be so far removed from the western coast of America as to relieve the Court of Madrid from any anxiety on that score.” Yet no one knew better than Talleyrand the instincts of the American people, and their ambition to use the entire continent for their experiments! He knew that the First Consul, by his instructions to Laussat, had given, so far as he could, the authority of both French and Spanish governments to the claim of the United States that Louisiana stretched westwardly to the Rio Bravo, and on the northwest indefinitely to a line yet to be fixed. He knew that Laussat, who hated the Spaniards more than he did the Americans, had betrayed the secret. If Talleyrand hoped to repress American ambition, he must have calculated on the effects of force or fear, or he must have been overwhelmed by the immensity of the scale on which the Americans were acting. The doctrine of contiguity, on which the United States could rest their most plausible claim to Oregon, was as valid then as it ever afterward became; and if Talleyrand did not appreciate it, Godoy proved himself the more sagacious statesman. By Sept. 1, 1804, these precautionary measures were completed, and Talleyrand could wait for the coming of Monroe and Armstrong. About the middle of October Monroe appeared in Paris. His instructions, sent from Washington before the news of Pinckney’s extravagances had reached America, obliged him to insist upon the right to West Florida as “a _sine quâ non_, and no price to be given for it;”[216] to insist, also, upon the right to Texas, but with a border-land to be kept unsettled for thirty years; and to offer two million dollars for East Florida beyond the Perdido. The Cabinet then for the first time decided to commit itself to the doctrine that West Florida was a part of the Louisiana purchase,[217] alleging as its ostensible reason, not so much the abstract justice of the title, as the wish to avoid acknowledging Spanish land-grants made in Florida since the Louisiana cession. “It is indispensable,” wrote Madison, April 15, 1804, “that the United States be not precluded from such a construction [of the treaty],--first, because they consider the right as well founded; secondly and principally, because it is known that a great proportion of the most valuable lands between the Mississippi and the Perdido have been granted by Spanish officers since the cession was made by Spain. These illicit speculations cannot otherwise be frustrated than by considering the territory as included in the cession made by Spain.”