The future ability of the United States to repay any loan which might now be obtained was displayed; and he concluded with assurances that there was still a fund of inclination and resource in the country, equal to great and continued exertions, provided the means were afforded of stopping the progress of disgust, by changing the present system, and adopting another more consonant with the spirit of the nation, and more capable of infusing activity and energy into public measures; of which a powerful succour in money must be the basis. "The people were discontented, but it was with the feeble and oppressive mode of conducting the war, not with the war itself." With reason did the Commander-in-chief thus urge on the cabinet of Versailles, the policy of advancing a sum of money to the United States which might be adequate to the exigency. Deep was the gloom with which their political horizon was overcast. The British, in possession of South Carolina and of Georgia, had overrun the greater part of North Carolina also; and it was with equal hazard and address that Greene maintained himself in the northern frontier of that state. A second detachment from New York was making a deep impression on Virginia, where the resistance had been neither so prompt nor so vigorous[68] as the strength of that state and the unanimity of its citizens had given reason to expect. [Footnote 68: A slave population must be unfavourable to great and sudden exertions by militia.] The perplexities and difficulties in which the affairs of America were involved, were estimated by the British government even above their real value. Intercepted letters of this date from the minister, expressed the most sanguine hopes that the great superiority of force at the disposal of Sir Henry Clinton, would compel Washington with his feeble army to take refuge on the eastern side of the Hudson. [Sidenote: Propositions to Spain.] Even congress relaxed for an instant from its habitual firmness; and, receding from the decisive manner in which that body had insisted on the territorial and maritime rights of the nation, directed the American minister at Madrid to relinquish, if it should be absolutely necessary, the claims of the United States to navigate the Mississippi below the thirty-first degree of north latitude, and to a free port on the banks of that river within the Spanish territory. It is remarkable that only Massachusetts, Connecticut, and North Carolina, dissented from this resolution; New York was divided.[69] On a subsequent day, the subject was again brought forward, and a proposition was made for still farther concessions to Spain; but this proposition was negatived by all the states.[70] [Footnote 69: Secret journals of Congress, v. 2, pp. 393, 396, 407. This measure was moved by the delegation from Virginia, in consequence of instructions of 2d Jan. 1781. Sec. 10, H. at large, 538.] [Footnote 70: Secret journals of Congress, v. 2, p. 468.]