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leader would have dared to yield the right of search. Great Britain for
her part, viewing the expansion of domestic slavery in the United
States, came gradually to attribute the American contention, not to
patriotic pride, but to the selfish business interests of the
slave-holding states. In the end, in 1858, with a waning British
enthusiasm for the cause of slave trade suppression, and with
recognition that America had become a great world power, Britain yielded
her claim to right of search or visit, save when established by Treaty.
Four years later, in 1862, it may well have seemed to British statesmen
that American slavery had indeed been the basic cause of America's
attitude, for in that year a treaty was signed by the two nations giving
mutual right of search for the suppression of the African Slave Trade.
In fact, however, this was but an effort by Seward, Secretary of State
for the North, to influence British and European opinion against the
seceding slave states of the South.

The right of search controversy was, in truth, ended when American power
reached a point where the British Government must take it seriously into
account as a factor in general world policy. That power had been
steadily and rapidly advancing since 1814. From almost the first moment
of established independence American statesmen visualized the
separation of the interests of the western continent from those of
Europe, and planned for American leadership in this new world.
Washington, the first President, emphasized in his farewell address the
danger of entangling alliances with Europe. For long the nations of
Europe, immersed in Continental wars, put aside their rivalries in this
new world. Britain, for a time, neglected colonial expansion westward,
but in 1823, in an emergency of European origin when France,
commissioned by the great powers of continental Europe, intervened in
Spain to restore the deposed Bourbon monarchy and seemed about to
intervene in Spanish America to restore to Spain her revolted colonies,
there developed in Great Britain a policy, seemingly about to draw
America and England into closer co-operation. Canning, for Britain,
proposed to America a joint declaration against French intervention in
the Americas. His argument was against the principle of intervention;
his immediate motive was a fear of French colonial expansion; but his
ultimate object was inheritance by Britain of Spain's dying influence
and position in t