The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-12 00:00:00

THE AMERICAN QUESTION.

The Journal des Debats has the following sensible remarks
on the long-pending Oregon dispute:—"lt is not easy to ferns
an idea of the object which President Polk and his coun-
cillors propose to themselves. On one side, they reject arbi-
tration ; on the other, they adopt in their arguments such
premises as render it no longer possible to nego:iate; for the
President always sets out from this idea, that the whole of
the territory reverts to the Union, and that England has no
right to retain the smallest portion of it. Now, to propose
to a power purely and simply to abandon a territory that it
now occupies by common consent, is to tell it that no nego-
tiation will be entered into. To speak of one's love for peace
whilst putting forward such pretensions, is like talking non-
sense. The dispatches of Mr. Buchanan will be quite unin-
telligible to European diplomatists. In order to possess a
key to this mystery, to try and measure the exact bearing of
what President Polk is doing, the best way is to go back to
his inauguration Message.' In that document was produced
with eclat the doctrine that Europe has nothing to do with
the affairs of America, and that no sew European establish-
ment can be tolerated on the new continent, especially in
North America. The President, no doubt, considers that, in
the present state of things, under the system of joint-occu-
pation, England has, strictly speaking, no establishment in
Oregon. There exists in that territory, in fact, neither town
nor fortress. All is reduced to a hunt for peltries, organised
on a large scale, under the direction of the Hudson's Bay
Company, and a few posts for the purpose of trafficking with
the savages. The moment, on the contrary, the English
were placed in exclusive possession of a portion of the Oregon
they would found a colony there—a political and com-
mercial centre of action : that is to say, just what the
first magistrate of the Union has declared intolerable.
Consequently, the Oregon must wholly revert to
the Union. Such appears to be the object of his efforts—
the tendency of his arguments. This is what he will have,
no matter at what price, without being stopped by the news
communicated to his Government by the American
Envoy in I.oedon (Mr. M.Lane), that the English
Government is perfectly p-epared to make war imme-
diately upon the United States, and to strike great
blows at the first outbreak of hostilities ; and that it is
impossible not to perceive that the immense maritime pre-
parations of Great Britain have at lea-t an indirect relation
to the chances of rapture between that power and the Ame-
rican Union. If such be President Polk's idea, will the
American people follow it up? Every day informs us that
the most eminent men ara making manifestations in favour
of the cause of peace. The last arrival brought two docu-
ments, one by Mr. Rivers, finanerly ambassador at Paris,
who has long represented the state of Virginia in the :Fe-
deral Senate with much distinction ; the other by Mr. Gal-
latin, an illustrious veterar, who has resumed his pen at the
age of 85, and descended into the arena to implore Isis fellow-
citizens not to precipitate themselves into the abyss that
is being dug beneath their feet. The very amount of the
majority that voted the resolution' of the House of Re-
presentatives seems of a nature to give every security.
!'his majority, nevertheless, includes a considerable
number of orators, who have claimed for the United
States the whole of the Oregon territory, and the
excellent paper of Mr. Gallatin appears to us to de-
monstrate very clearly that the single act of the de-
nunciation of.t !is convention of 1827 would render the
maintenance ./c 23 A -ts extremely problematical; and, in fact,