That her majesty's government were as apprehensive as Mr. Seward himself could be, of an attempt to build upon a foundation of debts due, and injuries inflicted, by Mexico, a pretension to establish a new government in that country. Her majesty's government thought, however, that the most effectual mode of guarding against this danger would be for Great Britain, the United States, and France to join Spain in a course of action, the objects and limits of which should be distinctly defined beforehand. This certainly appeared more prudent than to allow Spain to act alone now, and afterwards to oppose the results of her operations, if she should go too far.[201] The British government avoided beforehand the necessity of a point-blank refusal of the plan of Mr. Seward, in case the treaty should go through, by declaring that the interest on the funded debt was not the only cause of complaint, but that there remained over and above that the outrages perpetrated upon British subjects still unredressed. Mr. Charles Francis Adams, the United States minister to England, did not approve the plan of guaranteeing the Mexican interest, and in his dispatch to Mr. Seward of November 1, 1861, he expressed his opinion rather more frankly than is usual for a minister to do in discussing an instruction from the state department. You will permit me here, however, to make a single remark in this connection upon the importance of appearing to divest the United States of any personal and selfish interest in the action it may think proper to adopt. The view customarily taken in Europe is that their government is disposed to resist all foreign intervention in Mexico, not upon any principle, but simply because it is itself expecting, in due course of time, to absorb the whole country for its own benefit. Hence any proposal like that which I had the honor to receive, based upon the mortgage of portions of Mexican territory as security for engagements entered into by the United States, naturally becomes the ground of an outcry that this is but the preliminary to an entry for inevitable foreclosure. And then follows the argument that if this process be legitimate in one case, why not equally in all. As against Great Britain and France, it would be difficult to oppose to this the abstract principle contained in what has been denominated the Monroe Doctrine, however just in substance.[202]