which was especially hostile to the
interests of Kentucky, Georgia, and the other frontier communities. The
men who proposed to enter into the scheme were certainly not loyal to
their country; although the adventurers were not actuated by hostile
designs against it, engaging in the adventure simply from motives of
private gain. The only palliation--there is no full excuse--for their
offence is the fact that the Union was then so loose and weak, and its
benefits so problematical, that it received the hearty and unswerving
loyalty of only the most far-seeing and broadly patriotic men; and that
many men of the highest standing and of the most undoubted probity
shared the views on which Brown and Innes acted.

Wilkinson's Advice to the Spaniards.

Wilkinson was bitterly hostile to all these schemes in which he himself
did not have a share, and protested again and again to Miro against
their adoption. He protested no less strongly whenever the Spanish court
or the Spanish authorities at New Orleans either relaxed their vigilant
severity against the river smugglers, or for the time being lowered the
duties; whether this was done to encourage the Westerners in their
hostilities to the East, or to placate them when their exasperation
reached a pitch that threatened actual invasion. Wilkinson, in his
protests, insisted that to show favors to the Westerners was merely to
make them contented with the Union; and that the only way to force them
to break the Union was to deny them all privileges until they broke it.
[Footnote: _Guyarre_, iii., 30, 232, etc. Wilkinson's treachery dates
from his first visit to New Orleans. Exactly when he was first pensioned
outright is not certain; but doubtless he was the corrupt recipient of
money from the beginning.] He did his best to persuade the Spaniards to
adopt measures which would damage both the East and West and would
increase the friction between them. He vociferously insisted that in
going to such extremes of foul treachery to his country he was actuated
only by his desire to see the Spanish intrigues attain their purpose;
but he was probably influenced to a much greater degree by the desire to
retain as long as might be the monopoly of the trade with New Orleans.

The Spanish Conspiracy.

The Intendant Navarro, writing to Spain in 1788, dwelt upon the
necessity of securing the separation of the Westerners from the old
thirteen States; and to this end he urged that commercial