The Express.
London, England, 1852-08-10 00:00:00

(A).VDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 10.

Witerfira it be decorous and dignified for the
.%merican Secretary of State to harangue an Amer--
can audience on the Fisheries Question in its present
state, is a point on which British notions of,
propriety cannot for a moment hesitate in com- '
ing to an opinion unfavourable to the con-
duct of Mr. M Ewan. Still Mr. IVERSTER'S con-
duct has its excuses. The constitution of the United
States excludes the Secretary of State from his
legitimate position in the Federal Legislature, and
having. consequently, no legitimate opportunity for
giving utterance to his opinions on important crises, he
is compelled in so popular a government to make one
that has its inconveniences. Then, too, in the New
England States, which ore so deeply concerned in
this threatened exclusion from the -Bay of Fundy, it
was not unnatural that those who assembled at
Marshfield to do him honour should expect some
notice of the subject from Mr. WEI3z•TER; and to
disappoint popular anticipation in the face of a
Presidential Election would constitute a serious
offence in the United States. We must not, there--
tore, judge Mr. AVelisren too harshly for doing in
his own country what would be a breach of all
ministerial propriety in this; particularly u his
statements throw farther light on the question so
rashly and so mis7hievously opened by Lord DERRY
and his colleagues.
The most potent consequences," says Mr.
WEIV,TER, are involved in this matter. Our
tisberies have been the very nurseries of our navy."
No doubt they have been; and that is a considera-
tion very interesting to Americans. But it is never-
theless beside the real questions in this ease.,
They are: First, whether the Americans have,,
under the Treaty of Ghent, any legal right
to nurse their navy in the Bay of Fundy ;
Secondly, what legal rights their practice of fishing
there (in disregard of the British view of the treaty)
up to March, 1843, and with the permission of the
British government since that date, gave the Ameri-
cans ; and, thirdly, if none, whether it was good
policy, in accordance with enlightened views of com-
merce, or was only calculated to rupture the rela-
tions between two countries—whose every interest
ought to make them (in material concerns)
one—for England to act on the strict legal
interpretation of the treaty, to disregard the long
habit of American trespass previous to 1543, and to
treat as naught her own permission in that year,
without the form. the courtesy, or decency of pre-
cious notice; and to commence in the Bay of Fundy
an entire change of policy," by sending thither
thirteen ships of war, seizing on 'American fishing-
boats, and setting in motion Vice-Admiralty Courts
for their condemnation?

These are the real questions; and even those
who contend that, under the treaty of Ghent, the
Bay of Fundy is a mare elmsestm ; and that usage
and permission to the contrary created no legal
rights ; even they must unhesitatingly condemn the
course adopted and described in the third of these in-
quiries. For extreme rights of excluding other
nations from a fishery which by our lachesse and our
leave they had fished in for more than thirty years,
mast be reasonably and rationally used ; otherwise
we not only excite prejudices and pardons, but
we run the risk of destroying property
which we ourselves have been the occasion
of creating. The Boston memorial to Presi-
dent FILL totte represents that 2,100 vessels and
30,000 seamen are now engaged in these fisheries
representing property valued at twelve millions of
dollars. To exclude this fleet, at a moment's
cadet, from its ordinary pursuits in the Bay of
Fundy is to depreciate its value ; to seise and
carry off, without warning, two of its nestle
foe condemnation is an outrage which respect
for a treaty only can shield from being pro-
perly descnbed as buccaneering. Elaborately to
defend the right which England may have
acquired under the Treaty of Ghent can, in
no way, degree, or extent justify such a sudden,
unforeseen, and pernicious attack on American
property this is. For men are moral beings
with moral as
responsibilities; and their common wel-
fan, the common pine of the world, and the com-
mon progress of the human race forbids them to ex-
ercise their legal rights in tech a manner as to hurt
and injure every one around them. A people so act-
lag must become a common nuisance to mankind.
Away, them, with such special pleading as diplo-
rustic rematches and fine legal views only will bear I
out! The matter really in controversy is how the
two foremost nations in the world (with every in_
tenet to unite and none to separate them) should act
towards each other. Looked at from this point of
view, who can doubt that the DERBY Cabinet have
made England give grievous and just offence to the
United States; have made her assume • position that
neither in morals nor in manners, neither in sub-
stance nor in form, is honourably maintainable; that,
they have made her turn to gall and wormwood
mug and growing American feelings of kind-
ness and regard; and that they have made her an
okeet of suspicion to other powers? Perhaps it is
true that they did not mean anything of the sort—
that all they aimed at was acquiring a little colonial
popularity, and to regain some reputation for vigour.
It may be so, but what a character for helplessness,
ignorance, and incapacity, what danger, does not the
absence of malevolent intent draw down on the
miserable cabinet that gets England into such wanton
and witless scrapes!
And how are these men, these ministers, to make
the Americans understand that they have under-
taken to govern the greatest of European monarchies,
not having either the head or the heart to manage
decently the affairs of a parish? Are they to go,
rap in hand and blushing, to Mr. Wen:lran and con-
fess the humiliating degrading truth? Or, having
headlong plunged their country into this meal, will
they bluster, and bounce, and bully, u if they had
all the courage of Parr and all the sagacity of Peet
to carry them through?
Not that in this question of American Fisheries
England has no just complaint against the United
States. It has what would have been a very serious
grievance in the bands of any Ministers, masters of
the hornbook of political education. That grievance
is the unfairness with which the Americans fish these
waters.

" If." exclaimed Mr. Waurren at Marshfield,
"our flag ships have conquered the enemy on the
sea, the tishenes have been at the bottom of it—
the fisheries are everywhere the seeds from which
these glorious triumphs were born and sprung."
Now. without professing to know very well where
" these glorious triumphs" riferred to were achieved,
and over what enemy they were gained, it is impos-
sible not to admit that in their fisheries the Ameri-
cans have a resource of great military strength.
And to them as a means of repelling attack or as-
sailinq wrong, no Englishman can have the smallest
objection. Bat, when in 1641 Lord ABERDZEN
conceded permission to the Americans to doh
m the Bay of Fundy, he ought undoubtedly
to have added the condition precedent, thit
they should do so on terms of equality with

the British colonists. That he did not was a here
blunder. For while the Americans receive abo Nit
on their catch in British waters from the American
government, the British fishers therein valve ROW
either from the Home or Colonial governments; and
while we admitted the Am/limns to take our ill&
freely, they imposed a heavy duty on its admission
when taken by British subjects into their ports.
Thus situated, with a bounty to their rivals operat-
ing against them, awl excluded by heavy taxes from
the neighbouring pe ts, the British fished at great
disad‘antage. And of the bounty and the duty the
British government haul a right to complain.
But eetnplaint, where camplaint would have been
reasonable and strung, the DEanY Cabinet has made
none. On the contrary, by the violent measures it
has adopted, it has greatly added to snd increased
the difficulty of having these grievances remedied.
It lias substituted wrong of its own for remonstrances
against injury by the United States to colonial in-
terests. Instead of despatei•es, it has sent guns
across the Atlantic. Instead of instructing Mr.
CRAMPTON at IViishington, it has ordered Admiral
SLYmoult into the Buy of Fundy. And instead of
using diplomacy and negotiation, it has risked colli-
sion and war.