Government were now busily employed in attacking our influence and undermining our interests in every quarter of the globe when they could find the means of doing so; that they despatched agents for this purpose (of various descriptions) in every direction, and he had no doubt Ellenborough would before long hear of some French agent in the regions about the Indus, probably attempting to establish some relations with the Sikh Government. He expressed some suspicion (I fancy without any cause) of General Ventura, and alluded to his having recently seen Louis Philippe at Paris. When he talked of the necessity of Ellenborough's caution in his public documents and private talk, he inveighed very bitterly against the free Press of India, and said, with an exaggeration to which he has been latterly rather prone, that this Press had produced a tyranny more insupportable than the Spanish Inquisition in its worst times. It was, on the whole, a remarkable letter, though not quite so good as he would have written in his best days. [Sidenote: RATIFICATION OF THE AMERICAN TREATY.] A great sensation has been made here by the publication of the proceedings in the secret session of the Senate at Washington, when the Treaty was ratified. This brought out the evidence of Jared Sparks, who told them of Franklin's letter to Vergennes, and of the existence of the map he had marked, with a boundary line corresponding precisely with our claim. People cry out lustily against Webster,[55] for having taken us in, but I do not think with much reason. Lord Ashburton told me it was very fortunate that this map and letter did not turn up in the course of his negotiation, for if they had, there would have been no Treaty at all, and eventually a scramble, a scuffle, and probably a war. Nothing, he said, would ever have induced the Americans to accept our line, and admit our claim; and with this evidence in our favour, it would have been impossible for us to have conceded what we did, or anything like it. _He_ never would have done so, and the matter must have remained unsettled; and after all, he said, it was a dispute _de lanâ caprinâ_, for the whole territory we were wrangling about was worth nothing, so that it is just as well the discovery was not made by us. At the same time, our successive Governments are much to blame in not having ransacked the archives at Paris, for they could certainly have done for a public object what Jared Sparks did for a private one, and a little trouble would have put them in possession of whatever that repository contained. [Footnote 55: [The American Secretary of State.]]