The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-11 00:00:00

THE SUN.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JAN. 11, 1860.

Scarcely anything could exceed the consummate
effrontery with which The San Juan Difficulty has
been referred to in his recent Message by President
BUCHANAN. The coolness with which the terms of
the agreement entered into in 1855 between England
and the United States with a view to the mainten-
ance of a spirit of mutual forbearance until the
settlement definitively of the rival claims to the
to the sovereignty of those islands—the coolness,
we say, with which these sufficiently explicit terms
ar© recounted as a preliminary to the narrative
of General HARNEY'S proceedings last summer,
certainly presents a spectable of matchless hardir
hood and moral obtuseness unwitnessed since the
days of ROBERT MACAIRE and JEREMY DIDDLER.
The two pictures drawn by the goosequill of Mr.
BUCHANAN are as well worth contrasting in their
way as the portraits of HAMLET and CLAUDIUS, or as
any of the classic heroes whose exploits have been
recounted, and whose merits have been after-
wards equally balanced upon that little
beam of perfect equipoise, the iron stylus of the
historian PLUTARCH. • "Look," we may say (with
as apt and nnhackneyed a Shaksperian quotation
as any indulged in among her friends by the
vulgar wife of that swindling nonentity in Mr.
SHIRLEY BROOKS' admirable novel of The Gordian
Knot), " Look upon this Picture"—culled from
President BUCHANAN'S last Gallery of Political
Sketches :

" Whilst indulging the hope that no other subject
ereen-
mained which could disturb the good understanding
the two countries, the question arising out of the adverse
claims of the parties to the island of San Juan,. under the
Oregon treaty of the 15th June, 1846, suddenly assumed a
threatening prominence. In order to prevent unfortunate
collisions on that remote frontier, the late Secretary of State,
on the 17th of July, 1855, addressd a note to Mr. Cramp-
ton, the British Minister at Washington, communicating
to him a copy of the instructions which he (Mr. Marcy)
had given on the 14th July to Governor Stevens, of Wash-
ington territory, having a special reference to an appre-
hended conflict between our citizens and the British sub-
jects on the island of San Juan' To prevent this, the
governor was instructed that the officers of the territory
should abstain from all acts on the disputed grounds
which are calculated to provoke any conflicts, so far as it '
can be done without implying the concessions to the autho,
cities of Great Britain of any exclusive right over the pre-'
wises.' The title ought to be settled before either party
"Mould attempt to exclude the other by force, or exercise eonm-
plete and exclusive sovereign rights within the fairly dis-
puted limits."

The " case" is plainly put in that Picture. And
Now as Mrs. ROBERT SPENCER (before alluded to)
again would say--" look on this !"

" Thus matters remained upon the faith of this arrange-
ment until the 9th of Silly last, when General Harney paid
a. visit to the island. He found upon it twenty-6e Ameri-
can residents with, their families, and also an establishment
of the Hudson's Bay Company for the purpose of raising
sheep. A short-time before his arrival one of the residents
had shot an animal belonging to the company, while tres-
passing upon his premises, for which, however, he offered to
pay twice its value; but that was refused. Soon after the