The Sun.
London, England, 1856-06-17 00:00:00

LLOYD'S SHIPPING.--(This Day.)

LONDON, Juno 17.—Wind this day at noon, S.W. ; mo-
derate breeze and cloudy, with slight rain.
PORTSMOUTH, June 16.—Wind W.—Sailed—Nile, for
Calcutta ; H.M.S. Nile, Halifax, N.S. ; Indiana (s. tpt.),
Southampton.
PLYMOUTH, June 16.—Wind S. W. —Sailed—Antagonist,
for Batavia ; H.M.Str. Virago, Rio Janeiro and the West
Indies. Off the port—Challenger, from London, for Cal-
cutta ; Sir Robert Salo (s. tpt.), Crimea, with the trans-
port 125 iu tow.
FV.,MOUTH, June 16.—Wind W.S.W.—Arrived—ln•
dustrie, from New Orleans. Off the port—Undine, from
Akyab, for Hamburg.
BERWICK, June 16.—Tho Zwantina, of Groningen, from
Bo'uess to Amsterdam, has put in leaky, and would be
discharged to be caulked.

(PER ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.)
SOUTHAMPTON, Tuesday Morning.
Arrived—lndiana, steam transport, from Portsmouth
Comet, Madrid.
Sailed—Blundell, Jessie for Australia.
LIVERPOOL, Tuesday Morning.

Wind W.N.W.
Arrived—Nuremberg and Agamemnon, from New Or-
leans ; Hilton, Akyab • Johann°,
' Requijada.
Off—William Itatbbone and William Stanley, from
Akyab.
Sailed—Jobanne, for Iceland ; St. Lawrence, Galatz; Al-
toman, Fredericia ; llevelius, Dantzic.
QUEENSTOWN, Juno 15.

Wind W.N.W.
Arrived—Virginia, from Salonica ; Excelsior Con-
stantincple ; Regina, Rio Graudo ; Gertruida Johanna,
lbraila ;Eanakte,Guna ; Ethiopo, Paraiba.

(Prom the Times.)
In both Houses it. will be observed that the explana-
tions of her Majesty's Ministers are limited to the more
immediate question pressed upon them by the dismissal
of our minister. That is the first thing to be considered
—whether or not we shall continue diplomatic relations
with the TJnited States through the medium of the gen-
deman now representing that government at our Court?
Neither Lord Clarendon nor Lord Palmerston says a
word on the subject of Central America, really at the
bottom of the whole affair. They make no allusion to
Ir. Marcy's refusal of arbitration on the souse of the
treaty, and offer of a reference to a scientific autho-
rity on some questions of fact. Lord Palmerston,
indeed, assures us that nothing more is intended by
the slight addition to our naval force in that part of
the world than to protect British property and
subjects, and to prevent needless collision. We
shall not, therefore, go into that matter, except just so
much as to exoress our conviction that, had not the
United States' Government come to the conclusion that
it was expedient to get rid of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
in one way or another, and clear that field for political
,perations, we should never have heard a syllable of the
recruiting question. It is evident that the United States'
Government is not very pressing for an immediate solu-
tion of the Central American difficulty, c insidering that
just now things are going on favourably for its interests.
The recruiting question, however, had ripened to a criti-
cal maturity, and could not be postponed. In this elem.-
g,ency the American President has, perhaps, taken the
mildest course that remained, short of giving it up alto-
gether. No doubt, he could hardly have done that with-
out damaging himself and his friends very considerably
with his people ; and of course it is not to be expected
that an American President should make a martyr of
himself for the peace of the world, still less for any con-
sideration to the feelings of England.
In saying that the 'United States' Government has
adopted a half-measure, and that our Government has met
it more than half way—in admitting that both sides had a
right to do what they have done—the one without giving
offence, the other without loss of honour—we do not for
one moment blink the fact that the result, so far, is
anything but flattering to the pride of this country. If
there are any people in the United States capable of
-Tratification at the fact, we certainly have been touched
in our honour, and we submit with as much grace as we
can to what all feel an insult. We have no disposition
to slur over that fact, for we are n, t without hope that
the British people will be rather less liable to this spe-
cies of annoyance for the future. We do not think the
people of England will henceforth sit by so quietly while
proceedings to which they have the gravest objection,
and negotiations of which they have an utter distrust, are
going on, nobody knows how, under the shield of the
Royal prerogative. The honour of England can hardly
be said to he in its own keeping, when month after
month its representatives ask, and ask in vain, what has
been done, what complaints have been received from
ether Governments, what answers have been sent, what
is the present state of the quarrel, and what its probable
conclusion. Throughout the whole of this recruiting
affair, and the correspondence arising out of it, the
British publi• has only known the steps taken by its
,wn Government when the American Government had
already acted upon them. We adhere to our opinion,
that the American Government has not acted with
iommon generosity in this affair, and that its pre-
tence of lasa majestas or offence against its territ rial
sovereignty is simply got up for the occaeion. Never-
thelee, the common sense of this country would not have
allewed Mr. Crampton to go on, week after week,
plunging deeper into a difficulty, at the very moment
when there was nothing the American Government so
earnestly wanted for Central American purposes. Often
mod often indeed has the British people been plunged
nto war or forced to humiliation before they knew what
t was all about, and by men whose names had hardly
re ached them. We cannot but think that the time is
going by for this sort of work. At least, if England
make no eff)rt to stop it after the present affair, it de-
erves the consequences.

(Prone the Morning Post. )
The public will have learnt, from the explanations
made last night in the House of Commons, that the
British Government, anxious not to throw away by any
act of theirs any chance of preserving the peace of the
world, and preventing the development into war of the
ill-founded quarrel forced upon us by the United States,
have now determined to accept the position pressed upon
them by the Government of President Pierce, and to
,ecede to the retention of Mr. Dallas at the Court of
London as a Minister charged with the conduct of
pecial negotiations and endowed with unusual discre-
tionary powers. Our own opinions have, as our readers
are aware, pointed rather in a contrary direction. We
have entertained strong doubts of the policy, as well as
the justice, of our yielding to such an extent to the
pressure put upon u= by the Cabinet of Washington,
sinless, as we expressed ourselves in an article which we
devoted to the sobj.ct on Saturday last, we could be
satisfied that the dismissal of Mr Crampton was the re-
sult not so much of a determination deliberately taken
and acted upon by the Government of the United States
to neutralise the prestige and enfeeble the influence of
England in the Western world, as the consequence of
the necessity of a domestic political position personal to
President Pierce. Looking at the events which have
preceded these unhappy differences, and weighing the
c eumente which have been made upon them on the
other side of the Atlantic, we felt ourselves driven, how-
ever unwillingly, to the adoption of the more unfavour-
able of the alternatives which offered themselves to us in
solution of the measures taken by America at this junc-

It is very difficult to gauge accurately the depth o
public opinion in a country with a population and a Go-
vernment like that of the United States, and we may
have misapprehended the nature and tendency of the cur-
rent which has been setting against the barriers of peace.
It may be that the movement is stirred up by nothing
mere permanent or important than the demand for party
cries on the eve of a struggle for party ascendancy ; al-
though it is scarcely credible that a man at the head of
the Executive of a great nation should be so little minded
and so wicked as to hazard the peace of the world for the
sake of an election, or for the paltry object of placing out
at large interest a political capital. If this be so, it such
a state of things and such a condition of political morality
and public feeling be possible, as a consequence of her in-
stitutions, in a country becoming, as America is, every day
more implicated in the c‘mcerns of Europe, the sooner
she sets herself in earnest about their modification the
better. The House of Commons appeared to be entirely
with Lord Palmerston on the question ; and we are con-
tent to suspend our own judgment in the matter, waiting
in hope that the patience, the self-control, and the saga-
city which the noble lord has displayed throughout the
anxious and imitating discussion of the points at issue
between the two nations may meet their reward in the
attainment of the objects at which he aims in common
with us—in common with the whole civilised world, who
stand by, deeply interested spectators of these lamentable
events.
Wrong and redolent of party spirit as his speech of last
night was, Mr. Disraeli was right, no doubt, in his obser-
vation that the enlistment question, and what Mr. Cramp-
ton, or his agents or his correspondents, had done or writ-
ten, was not the real reason of the display of ill•feeling
upon the part of the Government of the United States,
which gives us so much trouble, and the whole world
so much apprehension. An idea has, no doubt, been
engendered in their minds that England is jealous of the
growth of America, and stands in her path, an obstacle
to the expansion of her territory and the increase of
her power. We are not, as Americans understand
and use the word, " jealous" of them, neither are we
averse from the legitimate expansion of their power ;
but the modes in which they have attempted to ad-
vance themselves by the deglutition by foul mean',
when fair failed, of every attractive possession in the
hands of weaker neighbours, has compelled watchful-
ness, and created justifiable suspicion. Nor can we,
consistently with our duty to other countries with
whom we are in connection, or with a proper care of
our own position and interests, permit that complete
absorption and ultimate isolation of all the States of
the Western World which some of America's most fa-
mous and accredited statesmen contemplate as the legi-
timate object of the mission of the United States. If
Mr. Dallas have power, and possess ability and temper,
to settle the great and vexed questions to which the
progressive expansion of his country has given rise,
so as to prevent war now and for years to come, and
so as to obtain, through the voice of the American
people, the recognition of some principles founded in
reason and justice, by which that expansion shall be
governed—for proceed, we are aware, it will and must
in some shape, and under some conditions—we, for one,
shall he content to accept such a consummation in ex-
change for the great concession which the Crown of
Great Britain has just made to the Cabinet of Presi-
Ana tPierce.

The Siècle offers the following reflections on the
Anglo-American question :
" Were we in the year 1817, at that epoch when
Count Pozzo di Borgo proposed to the continental powers
a crusade against the United States, ' a perpetual hot-
bed of revolutionary ideas,' we o luld comprehend that
the United States, with a legitimate pride, might wish
to prove, in accepting a war with England, that their
independence is above all the attempts of the old world.
But to-day, when nobody denies and much less
attempts to menace this independence, so dear to all who
desire for liberty an inviolable refuge on earth ; to-day,
i when the American Union is recognised, is admitted
as a great power, and is excluded from Congresses and
political alliances simply because it suits the States to be
so, a war would have no excuse of national dignity, of
that dignity to which we easily conceive may be subjected
material interests. The suspension of diplomatic relations
would not be for us a sign that war is inevitable. The
national dignity being intact, nothing remains to the
Anglo-American difference that is not susceptible of
an easy arrangement. In the enlistment question England
knew herself grand, powerful, and honoured enough not
to hesitate in giving every satisfaction which could be
exacted between men of honour as between nations.
There exist no longer serious motives of war. With
respect to Central America, a species of misunder-
standing exists which must be cleared up sooner or

later. Let us suppose that the United States, directly
or indirectly,:ohtain possession of the Isthmus of Panama:
they could not adjudge to themselves the monopoly
of the passage across the isthmus, which is the high
road between Europe and Asia. Transpose the sup-
position and allow that the English werebecome masters
of the isthmus : the whole world would rise if necessary
to obligs them to leave the passage free to all nations.
The question of the neutralisation of the isthmus is like
that of the right of neutrals ; it is a question
impossible for any one to solve against the will
and general interest of civilisation. A war in or-
der to arrive at a solution desired by the whole
world, and which none is powerful enough to refuse,
would be more than an iniquitous war ; it would be un-
just and absurd. The agitators of opinion on the other
side of the Atlantic say that Europe must not be per.
milted to oppose the expansion of the United States.
These are big words, destined to screen a project disap-
proved of by the majority of the American nation as
soon as it is unveiled : the project of conquering terri-
tories which may lend themselves to favour the exten-
sion of slavery, and thereby tend to establish the domi-
nation of the south over the north—a domination which,
by the by, would be singularly facilitated by the seizure
of Central America. But let the slave states be on their
guard. A species of civil war has commenced in Kansas,
and the south may before long comprehend that separa-
tion has more importance as a menace than as an act.
A. million bales of cotton per annum, this is the pro-
duction in the name of which the Southern States
believe to explain and justify all. A million bales of
cotton may, in a few years, be produced by Algeria
without slaves, and then , The Government of
Mr. Pierce is too near its legal termination to precipi-
tate the country into a war which conicl;mily- be carried
on for some time by the United States by-moatia of pri-
vateers, the abo'ition of which has been hailed as one of
the most genuine proofs of progress in international
policy."