The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
TIMES.—We have perused with attention the
whole correspondence published by the official journal
of the United States, with reference to the transac-
tions which led to the cessation of intercourse be-
tween the American Government and M. Guillaume
Tell Poussin, the accredited Minister of France, and
we publish in another place the three very extra-
ordinary letters which appear to have terminated this
dispute. That of Mr. Clayton, the American Secre-
tary of State, addressed directly to the French
Minister for Foreign Affairs (contrary to all diplo-
matic usage), is certainly a very startling produc-
tion, and whatever may have been the indiscretion
of if. Poussin, it must be confessed that the tone of
the Minister of the United States is such as has
seldom been employed in the relations of one
friendly State to another. If language " highly
offensive and discourteous, both in manner and in
substance," be a disqualification for public duties,
Mr. Clayton has rendered himself obnoxious to the
charge of using it ; and his communications both to
M. Poussin and to M. de Tocqueville are in the
style usually adopted by the head of a department in
reprimanding his own subordinates, but are utterly
unfit to be addressed to the co equal Ministers of a
foreign Power. M. de Tocqueville's dispatch, on the
other hand, is marked by an evident, and perhaps an
excessive, desire to smooth over an incident for which
he could not be held personally responsible. With
regard to the merits of the two claims for compensa-
tion in which the disputes originated, we infer from
these papers that an impartial umpire would decide
one of them in favour of France, the other against
her. M. Porte had purchased 500 bales of tobacco,
at a public sale by authority, which took place in the
American barracks at Puebla. Two weeks after-
wards it was discovered that this property had been
wrongfully seized and sold, and it was forcibly taken
back fromlM. Porte's warehouse by American soldiers,
the purchase-money being returned to M. Porte ;
but in the meantime this tobacco had. been twice
resold at a profit, and M. Porte was made not
only to forego his own profit, but to indem-
nify the next purchaser for that which he
would have realised if the sale had been a good one.
The American authorities having committed the ori-
ginal blunder of selling this property with a bad
title, would seem to be bound to make good the losses
or profits which had accrued on subsequent transfers.
Suppose that at a Custom-house sale in this country
property which had been improperly seized was dis-
posed of to the highest bidder, and that this property
had subsequently passed from hand to hand in the
operations of trade • it would be intolerable for the
Government to seek to cure its own error by an-
nulling a series of posterior bona fide transactions.
The more equitable course would be to indemnify
the original owner whose property was wrongfully
seized. In this case an attempt was made to show
that M. Porte knew that the tobacco in question
was private property, and could not be legally dis-
posed of; but in the case of a military sale of con-
fiscated property this fact would scarcely alter the
question, and the fact itself was by no means proved.
Upon the whole, then, we think that M. Porte's
claim was entitled to favourable consideration from
the American Government, and certainly could not
be disposed of by a curt refusal. In the second case,
the French Government raised an objection to the
payment of salvage, on the ground that the service
which rescued a brig and her crew from certain de-
struction was rendered by a steamer of war of the
United States navy. This objection is clearly un-
founded in law. The books are full of instances of
claims of salvage allowed to salvors in the maritime
service of different States ; and it is a matter of public
policy that officers and crews of all vessels should
have the same inducement of salvage or profit to in-
duce them to hazard their own lives in rescuing other
vessels from shipwreck. This doctrine has been con-
stantly acted upon by the Admiralty Courts of all
maritime nations, and it is for the interest of
French shipping that it should not be repu-
diated by France. Commander Carpender's
claim for salvage was, we think, a good one,
though he subsequently abandoned it, and the
French Minister had certainly no right to demand
the censure of an officer who had only asked that
acknowledgment of his services to which the mari-
time law entitled him. Such questions as these are
of course open to discussion and to differences of legal
opinion, but to quarrel about them indicates a com-
plete absence of that dignity which the American
Ministers seems so anxious to assert. They must,
moreover, have been perfectly aware at the moment
that they broke off their intercourse:with M. Poussin,
that the French Government was on the point of
recalling him, and that the appointment of his suc-
cessor had for some weeks been under consideration.
Mr. Clayton's letter of the 14th inst. was there-
fore a gratuitous embarrassment to the French
Government, aimed not so much at M. Poussin
as at the French Foreign Minister himself. It
would have been well for the credit of the
American statesmen if they had more fully consi-
dered and followed the most important precedent
afforded by their own history in a case of this
nature, which places in a very striking light the
forbearance and wisdom of the immortal founders of
their own commonwealth. Citizen Genet, who was
dispatched as French Minister to Washington in
1793, was in his way a sort of M. Poussin. War had
just broken out between France and England, and the
whole solicitude of the American Government, then
presided over by Washington himself, was directed to
the maintenance of the neutrality of the United States.
Genet openly set this policy of the American Go-
vernment at defiance. He illegally issued commis-
sions to privateers, and even equipped armed vessels in
neutral harbours. He bullied and outraged the Go-
vernment ; he intrigued with the war-party in the
House of Representatives. The Cabinet demanded
his recal, for which, indeed, there was ample
cause. Some members of the Government pro-
posed that his passports should be sent him, but
this harsh measure was steadily opposed both by
the President and by Mr. Jefferson, for they
viewed it, as in all cases, insulting to the nation
which had the misfortune to be represented by such
a man, and they found that it had seldom been
resorted to without leading to war. Their patience
was rewarded, for M. Genet was shortly afterwards
superseded, and remained in America in the station
of a private citizen. The same result might have
been attained without this fracas in the present in-
stance. In recent times we have witnessed a more
frequent repetition of this proceeding, which was
unknown to the more formal habits of the last cen-
tury, except in most serious cases of rupture. But
we revert to the subject chiefly to deprecate such
methods of self-redress as discourteous, dangerous,
and undignified. They tend to lessen that indepen-
dence with which it may sometimes be the duty of a
foreign envoy to speak and act in the discharge of his
public duty. They flatter the lowest order of popular
passions at the expense of the Ifeelings and the con-
sideration due to a foreign country ; and every case
in which such an event has taken place without
leading to more serious consequences serves as a pre-
cedent to cause the repetition of the practice to be
lightly thought of. Lastly, they introduce a novel and
inconvenient distinction between the person of an
envoy and his public commission, which lowers his
official character and effaces the public and national
stamp which ought to belong indelibly to all his
actions.
CHRONICLE.—The Hungarian refugees may be
considered safe from Imperial indignation by this
time ; and, notwithstanding the arrival (or expected
arrival) of English, French, and Austrian fleets in
the Bosphorus, we apprehend no immediate danger to
the peace of Europe from the recent misunderstand-
ing between the Czar and the Sultan. , But the state
of the affair, and the relative position of the parties,
are far from satisfactory ; and it strikes us that the
line of defence, or apology, adopted by the agents
and self-termed friends of Russia in this country, has
not been particularly remarkable for sound judgment
or for tact. We have been told, apparently from
diplomatic authority, that there is no harm in asking;
that the right to prefer an unreasonable claim stands
upon the same footing as the right to refuse it ;
and that a refusal simply leaves a claimant where
he was. But this is a mistake, and would imply a
very low tone of public morals. There is a laxity
of principle in preferring an unfounded claim, and
a loss of self-respect or dignity in abandoning it on
the first exposure of its groundlessness. Our estimate
of the Emperor's character would rather lead us to
suppose that he was carried away by a sudden im-
pulse, that he mistook the treaties, or that his am-
bassadors exceeded their instructions, than that he
simply meant to try the effect of a
Nor willsurpriserude
or.
startling menace upon the Porte.rationalf
anxiety be quieted by the confident assurances
persons or personages who can have no exclusive
likeet wo euerne.
knowledge of what passed at Constantinople
the representatives of the five Powers, send,
selves' can do no more than speculate on the effect
which the remonstrances of England and France
may produce at St. Petersburgh. The French
papers, so far as they have yet spoken out, condemn
the Emperor, but they do not go beyond strong cen-
sure; they make no appeal to arms; and they attach
no paramount importance to his demand, except as
indicating a determination to fix a speedy quarrel
upon Turkey, and then drive her out of Europe,
or at least attach her Danubian territory to his
own. In support of this view, the Assemblie Na-
tionale (a Conservative journal, which an evening
contemporary has kindly associated with ourselves in
the alleged design of setting France and England to-
gether by the ears) points attention to the complete
revolution effected in the politics of the south-eastern
division of Europe by the close alliance of Russia
with Austria, which, in all former disputes between
the Czar and the Sultan, invariably took part against
the Czar. Austria is the only power that could throw
two hundred thousand men upon the flank of the
Russians in their advance upon Constantinople; and