y was Adams opposed to Canning's proposed self-denying ordinance,
but he was equally averse to becoming a partner with England. Such
cooperation might well prove in time to be an "entangling alliance,"
involving the United States in problems of no immediate concern to its
people and certainly in a partnership in which the other member would
be dominant. If Canning saw liberal England as a perpetual minority in
absolutist Europe, Adams saw republican America as a perpetual inferior
to monarchical England. Although England, with Canada, the West Indies,
and her commerce, was a great American power, Adams believed that
the United States, the oldest independent nation in America, with a
government which gave the model to the rest, could not admit her to
joint, leadership, for her power was in, not of, America, and her
government was monarchical. Already Adams had won a strategic advantage
over Canning, for in the previous year, 1822, the United States had
recognized the new South American republics.

Great as were the dangers involved in cooperation with England, however,
they seemed to many persons of little moment compared with the menace of
absolutist armies and navies in the New World or of, perhaps, a French
Cuba and a Russian Mexico. The only effective obstacle to such foreign
intervention was the British Navy. Both President Monroe and Thomas
Jefferson, who in his retirement was still consulted on all matters of
high moment, therefore favored the acceptance of Canning's proposal as
a means of detaching England from the rest of Europe. Adams argued,
however, that England was already detached; that, for England's
purposes, the British Navy would still stand between Europe and
America, whatever the attitude of the United States; that compromise or
concession was unnecessary; and that the country could as safely take
its stand toward the whole outside world as toward continental Europe
alone. To reject the offer of a country whose assistance was absolutely
necessary to the safety of the United States, and to declare the
American case against her as well as against the more menacing forces
whose attack she alone could prevent, required a nerve and poise which
could come only from ignorant foolhardiness or from absolute knowledge
of the facts. The self-assurance of Adams was well founded, and no
general on the field of battle ever exhibited higher courage.

Adams won over the Cabinet, and the President decided to incorpora