While Mr. Corwin was still in negotiation with the Mexican government in reference to some method of releasing Mexico from her complications with the allied governments of Europe, the United States Senate, in reply to two successive messages of the President, passed a resolution, February 25, 1862, declaring the opinion "that it is not advisable to negotiate a treaty that will require the United States to assume any portion of the principle or interest of the debt of Mexico, or that will require the concurrence of European powers." This effectually put an end to Mr. Seward's plan. Meanwhile Sir Charles Wyke had reopened negotiations with the Mexican government and negotiated a treaty which might have satisfied British claims, but the treaty was thrown out by the Mexican congress by a large majority, and also disapproved by the British government in view of an agreement entered into with France and Spain unknown to Sir Charles Wyke.[203] The agreement referred to was the convention signed at London, October 31, 1861, between Spain, France, and Great Britain, in reference to the situation of affairs in Mexico and looking to armed intervention for the purpose of securing their rights. The preamble of the convention recites that the three contracting parties "being placed by the arbitrary and vexatious conduct of the authorities of the republic of Mexico under the necessity of exacting from those authorities a more efficient protection for the persons and property of their subjects, as well as the performance of the obligations contracted toward them by the republic of Mexico, have arranged to conclude a convention between each other for the purpose of combining their common action." The most important article of the convention in view of its subsequent violation by the Emperor Napoleon, was the second, which declared that: The high contracting parties bind themselves not to seek for themselves, in the employment of coercive measures foreseen by the present convention, any acquisition of territory, or any peculiar advantage, and not to exercise in the subsequent affairs of Mexico any influence of a character to impair the right of the Mexican nation to choose and freely to constitute the form of its own government. The fourth article, recognizing that the United States also had claims against Mexico, provided: