The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-11 00:00:00

they were entitled to their release on the ground that the
acts charged against them were acts committed under com-
missions of instructions fromthe authorities of the so called
Confederate States—that in fact the crimes with which they
were charged were acts of war. Without admitting for ab
instant that even if they were it *mild forni a ground for
their discharge, I fail to see that,while the actual seat of war
is several hundred miles distant from our frontier, a mere
incursion of a few men secretly contrived and without the
ordinary feature or emblems of a warlike expedition—re-
sulting in an inroad upon the territory of a neighbouring
country and the taking of the lives of non-belligerent and
unoffending citizens, and plundering them of their property,
and escaping into this country with the plunder—l say I
fail to see that such acts are entitled to be treated or consi-
dered as acts of war. I can only consider them as crimes of
murder and robbery under the pretence of war. If it were
otherwise the most revolting crimes might be perpetrated
under such pretexts, and being committed on the borders of
friendly and contiguous states, as in the present instance,
the offenders would escape the punishment that such crimes
deserve. War as understood and carried on among civilised
nations has enough evils and calamities without extending
its horrors to murder and robbery, suck as I refer to. As
well might it have been argued during the Crimean war,
that if a few desperate men entered any part of our pro-
vince from the United States, and murdered and robbed
our people, and immediately fled thereafter within the Ame-
rican frontier, they were, under the pretext that their crimes
were acts of war in aid of Russia, entitled to protection,
and not within the treaty. One's common sense revolts at
any law, international or otherwise, being invoked to pro-
tect the perpetrators of such atrocities and crimes from
being amenable to the laws of the outraged country. Some
of you gentlemen may remember that a number of the mis-
guided men involved in the rebellion of 1837, who fled and
took refuge within the American frontier, in conjunction
with:citizens of the United States, effected for a few days a
landing on Navy Island, and employed a steamboat in the
transport of men and munitions of war to the island from
the American shore. It will be in your recollection the
very bitter and exasperated feeling that those proceedings
created in the mind of every loyal subject in the province,
and which resulted in the cutting out of the Caroline
while lying in an American port, with a view to her de-
struction. The act itself was a violation of American soil,
and was vindicated by us on the ground of self-preserva-
tion. And were it not for the good sense of the two Go-
vernments at the time, the two nations might have been
plunged into all the calamities of civil war. When some
of their citizens were killed and wounded, and their banks
plundered, how intensely bitter would that feeling become
if our authorities and our people did not take effectual steps
to repress and to prevent a recurrence of such crimes, or if,
upon the commission, no effort was made to capture and
deliver over to justice men who had not only forfeited all
right to protection, but were become criminals of the deepest
dye. The direct tendency of such outrages is to bring the
people of the two countries into collision, and eventually
involve us in all the multiplied evils of war. We have re-
cently seen the great peril in which our national rela-

tions were placed by an order of the Amerioan general
commanding on the eastern frontiers. Fortunately,
that part of the order which was fraught with the
danger to the peace of the two nations was
promptly disallowed by the President of the United States,
a step which affords us an assurance that the Government
at Washington relies upon the good faith of our executive,
and upon its willingness and ability to redress and pre-
vent any violation of neutrality or national law, and to
carry into effect all our treaty stipulations. The matter is
now in the hands of our Government, and we can all rest
assured that the dignity and honour of the country will be
maintained ; that the most effectual means will be taken
to keep inviolate our own territory, and to prevent any
part of it being made use of as a point from which refu-
gees or others may plot or proceed to molest the citizens
of the United States, and that our treaty obligations
will be carried in their integrity. It, nevertheless,
behoves every one of us to use all our influence, and
to make every exertion, individually and collectively, to
discourage and counteract every breach of neutrality on in-
ternational law ; and it is to be hoped that all refugees and
others within our boundaries must see that they cannot en-
gage in any such criminal enterprises as I have referred to,
without encountering public indignation, in addition to the
penalties of the law. I have so far felt it, Mr. Foreman and
gentlemen, to be my duty to make to you these few remarks
in connection with the subject to which I deemed it pro-
per to direct your attention—a subject in which is involved
matters of the most serious import to yourselves as men of
property, and having a stake in the country, and to every
one interested in its well-being and prosperity. His lord-
ship, after reading the above charge, said he might add that
we must all deplore the enormous expense the conntry must
be put to by the measures rendered necessary by the cir-
cumstances to which he had alluded. We must also feel
how serious was the hardship inflicted on our own people,
volunteers and others, who, at the call of his excellency,
had to go to the frontier to repress these outrages. The
necessity for these proceedings was much to be regretted,
but every well-disposed person and good subject must ad-
mit their necessity, inasmuch as if these outrages wero to
go on unchecked, they must inevitably, as he had stated,
result in war.