The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-21 00:00:00

into two or three watches—and with the marines
be ready for immediate action, for the sailors and
marines being all well used to the service, they would
be ready for any and everything. Let the Admi-
ralty look to it—or rather let the Government
insist on breaking through red-tape tomfoolery,
and act as men.

Then, again, with respect to being prepared
against invasion, which must of necessity be
sudden, we shall have a nucleus of well-trained
men, who can turn their hand to prompt account.
Instead of fortifying points here and there all
along the coast, for the invaders will choose their
own ground, how much better would it not be to
have flying batteries at several central stations,
ready to be transported by railways at telegraphic
notice to the scene of danger ?

We may be told that suggestions like these
would entail heavy expense. We answer—no
expense ought to stand in the way of national
safety. Our being well and always prepared will
make our assailants think twice before they ♦en-

ture in paying us a rough, and unwelcome
visit. We shall have two chances to their one
—land and water—and a good hot fire into the

bargain.

Suddenly—in the midst of European and Asiatic
complications, in the midst of all that is said and
written about the anxiety of the Italians and the

atrocity of the Chinese—there starts up another
of those periodical annoyances, a new difficulty be-
tween Great Britain and the United States. The

present difficulty between the English and the

Americans, like so many of its predecessors, proves

. _
on examination, to be only the sequel of one of the
old difficulties long past and gone, and, up to this
moment, supposed to have been years ago settled
definitively to our mutual satisfaction. Again the
supposition turns out to have been quite erroneous.
Again the more sanguine believers in an amicable

understanding between father and son, between
JoHN and JONATHAN, have been too precipitate,
we find, in laying that flattering unction

to their souls. The celebrated treaty of
the 15th of June, 1846, solving (as it
was imagined) the problem of the Oregon
Boundary, defined, it is true, the line there sepa-
rating the territories of Great Britain and the ter-

.-
ritones of the United States, to all appearances

quite explicitly. It traced that boundary line as
running " along the forty-ninth parallel of north
latitude to the middle of the channel which sepa-

rates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and
thence southerly through the middle of the said
channel and of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific Ocean."
But, as it so happens—" this said channel," appa-
rently very clear and simple phrase, indeed, is, in
reality, one of considaable complexity and uncer-
tainty. And for this sufficient reason that there are,
as it so chances, two channels dividing Vancouver's
Island from the North American Continent.
There is a channel, that is to say, upon either
side of the little group of the Arroo Islands.
Which of these two channels is the one meant by
that clause in the Treaty of 1846, about the Oregon
Boundary, remains in fact yet to be decided. Inso-
much is this uncertainty recognised in both coun-
tries, that Commissioners from the two Governments
have, in point of fact, been busily occupied for some
time past in striving—hitherto ineffectually—to
settle the matter in dispute for once and for all to
general satisfaction.
Such in effect was the actual situation out in
Fuca's Sound, when the Government at Washing-
ton—incited, probably, by a remembrance of the old
legal adage about possession being nine points of
the law—sends out a sort of a buccaneering, fili-
bustering expedition to put an end at once to all
further uncertainty by formally seizing one of the
said Arroo Islands—the one variously called the
Island of San Juan or Bellevue. The ex-
pedition is altogether so flagrantly lawless
of its kind, that it is not unworthy of
having been led by General WILLIAM WALKER,
the most renowned and daring of all the Yankee
filibusters. Another filibustering general, however,
takes command of the invading force—General
HARNEY it is who suddenly makes this descent
upon San Juan, formally taking possession
of it in the name of the Republic, not
" one and indivisible," but free and independ-
ent. General HARNEY goes thither with one com-
pany of infantry and four companies of artillery.
He is supported by four vessels of the American
navy. He lands fifty of his soldiers on San Juan
—begins building barracks there—and issues a
proclamation claiming the island as American ter-
ritory. Free and independent !—certainly, a Re-
public is That acts thus contrary to all right, to all
justice, to all international law. Against proceed-
ings so directly and monstrously in contraven-
tion of all the habits and usages of civilised
countries—Governor DOUGLAS at once protested
loudly and indignantly. His Excellency, by a
counter-proclamation, declares the occupation to be
illegal—claims the island on the part of her Bri-
tannic MAJESTY as under the supremacy of the
Crown of England—and despatches to San Juan
forthwith a British force of Sappers and Miners
with her MAJESTY'S ships Tribune, Plumper, and
Satallite. Captain PICKNET, who has command of
the American garrison already established on the
island, refuses leave to the English Sappers and
Miners to land. It is even asserted in some of the
United States newspapers received by this last mail,
that a British steamer had opened fire upon the
Americans, and that in consequence of this lament-
able collision between the forces thirty Americans
had been killed. Rejecting these rumours,
however, as altogether idle and extrava-
gant—it is obvious to us, at a glance,
that, here, in this little difficulty about
San Juan is the germ of what may, if not nipped,
betimes, in the very bud, grow speedily into a
monstrous disaster. Happily, Governor DOUGLAS
and General HARNEY appear to have, both of them,
taken the wisest course left to them, under the cir-
cumstances, by referring the whole matter, at once,
to the consideration and decision of their respective
Governments. Upon those Governments, therefore,
at London and Washington, devolves, at this mo-
ment, a very solemn responsibility—the imminent
responsibility of hastening, at last, to an amicable
settlement, a long standing* dispute which has been
brought thus to a sudden climax by a lawless act of
occupation.

We have for some time refrained from noticing a
subject on which most of our contemporaries have
seen fic to comment, because we thought it hardly
fitted for the columns of a newspaper. It has, how-
ever, become so prominent of late, having neces
sadly attracted the attention of local journals in
three sections of the kingdom, that a daily news-
paper can hardly ignore it; nor, on account of cer
tain remarkable connected circumstances, should w(
be justified in doing so. We refer to the " Re-
vival of Religion"
in the North of Ireland.

One of the consequences of the great commercial
panic in America, at the close of 1857, was that
many persons, in New York especially, regarded it
as a providential judgment, more particularly on
thehi money-getting, e
gyi-
gaetting, money-loving commercial world.
This originated the idea of mid-day meetings for
o rn
prayer and worship in the intervals of business ;
these extended, till throughout that great oommer-