The United States government feared a secret transfer of Cuba by Spain and that such action would be taken before Washington could become cognizant of it. It therefore sought to be allowed to station consuls at Havana, and in Porto Rico, who were, of course, practically to be the eyes of the United States government, to detect any incipient plot to rid Spain of Cuba. This idea did not find favor at the Spanish court and a polite letter of demurrer was sent, stating that such a proposition was untenable at the time, owing to the turbulent condition of affairs on the island, but that later, when Cuba became more peaceful, it would be considered. The real reason for Spain's refusal doubtless was that she was still smarting from the United States's recognition of the independence of other South American countries, and she did not feel justified in allowing anyone who she felt would be a spy to have an official position on the island, particularly when that person came from a country which, having attained its own liberty, naturally had sympathy with those who had theirs yet to gain. The state of affairs at this time was epigrammatically described by _The London Courier_, when it said: "Cuba is the Turkey of trans-Atlantic politics, tottering to its fall, and kept from falling only by the struggles of those who contend for the right of catching her in her descent." Spain, always badly in need of money, made in 1838 a proposal to England to offer Cuba as security for a loan, which undoubtedly would have meant that England would eventually have to take Cuba in payment for the debt. The United States Minister at Madrid, hearing of the project, made it so clear that such a course would not be tolerated by his country, that the idea was abandoned. A few years later President Van Buren again expressed the American pro-slavery policy toward Cuban independence: "The Government has always looked with the deepest interest upon the fate of these islands, but particularly of Cuba. Its geographical position, which places it almost in sight of our southern shores, and, as it were, gives it the command of the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indian seas, its safe and capacious harbors, its rich productions, the exchange of which for our surplus agricultural products and manufactures constitutes one of the most extensive and valuable branches of our foreign trade, render it of the utmost importance to the United States that no change should take place in its condition which might injuriously affect our political and commercial standing in that quarter. Other considerations connected with a certain class of our population made it to the interest of the southern section of the Union that no attempt should be made in that island to throw off the yoke of Spanish dependence, the first effect of which would be the sudden emancipation of a numerous slave population, which result could not but be very sensibly felt upon the adjacent shores of the United States."