The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-03 00:00:00

UST.

OIL

can defy the combined fleets of France, Russia,
Spain, Italy, and Germany, must be very ignorant
or very arrogant. There has grown up on the other
side of the Atlantic a brawny young giant—blood
of our blood and bone of our bone—who carried
with him to the rock-bound coasts where the Pilgrim
Fathers landed the same Scandinavian blood that
makes England the greatest among maritime na-
tions. Backed by the resources of a continent upon
which the Creator has lavished in matchless prodi-
gality every gift conducive to the highest civilisa-
tion, our Transatlantic sons seem animated with no
other desire, fired by no other aspiration, than to
try conclusions and measure strength with us upon
what we have hitherto loved to call our own element.
hence the vital importance of abandoning com-
parisons with France, in order to watch with
jealous vigilance the gigantic strides made by our
American cousins within four brief years, and pur-
sued since the cessation of hostilities, nearly eleven
months ago, without suspended effort or materially
abated expenditure. It is too inuAi the fashion in
England, because America is a long way off, and
is to ninety-nine hundredths of Englishmen all but
a terra incognita, to think that she has nothing to
teach us. From so suicidal a delusion we shall
probably be sooner or later roughly awakened.
'The pamphlets and letters upon English and Ameri-
can vessels which Mr. Donald M'Kay, a well-
known shipbuilder of New York, has recently
written, are well calculated to wound our vanity
and arouse our vigilance. With every abatement
for exaggeration, there is enough in Mr. M'Kay's
insinuation that one single vessel, the Dunderberg,
is a match for the whole English navy, to arrest
attention, if not to excite alarm. Mr. 2,l‘liay tells
us that at the opening of the war the American war-
navy numbered 26 steamers of 49,700 tons ; and
that at its close it numbered 558 steamers, with an
aggregate tonnage of 408,000 tons. " Out of these
558 steamers," adds Mr. M'Kay, " 200 vessels,
aggregating 241,000 tons, were built by the Navy
Department. In no country, with such limited
means, and under such difficult circumstances, has
there ever been put afloat in the same time such
an immense naval armament. Certainly it cannot
be said that in the time of trial the Navy Depart-
ment has been found wanting." We have not
space to make further extracts from Mr. Maay's
letters, which we heartily commend to the notice
of Lord Clarence Paget and of Mr. Reed. But in
addition to the high speed sought in American ships,
to the immense calibre of the guns they carry, and
to the ceaseless activity and enterprise of their
builders, we learn from Mr. M'Kay that our cousins
have perfected an apparatus for swinging out torpe-
does from the yardarms of their vessels to be ex-
ploded by electricity upon the decks or under the
bows of hostile ships possessing inferior speed.
Without raising sensationrl alarms, we have said
enough to indicate that neither France, Russia,
Italy, Spain, nor all those countries combined,
are the maritime competitors whom we have occa•
sion to dread.

EFFECTS OF NON-REC IPR 0 C ITT. —The Toronto
(Canada) British Whig is pathetic over the termi-
nation of the Reciprocity Treaty between Canada
and the United States. Our colonial contem-
porary discourses in the following lugubrious
strain :—" On the 17th day of March next the Re-
ciprocity Treaty ceases, and the sun of American
prosperity shines no more on our benighted Canada.
No more shall American greenbacks provide us with
the necessaries of life ; no more shall the American
Eagle take us under the shadow of his protecting
wing. The United States Senate has spoken, and
Canada's place on the map is henceforth to be a
blank. On the 17th day of March vegetation
ceases north of the St. Lawrence. Grain will re-
fuse to sprout, and potatoes and turnips will turn
into stones. The water will dry up in the streams,
and non-reciprocity, like a plague, will attack the
cattle, killing them off by thousands. The wells of
Bothwell and Enniskillon will stop their flow of oil
so completely that not even a sheriff's writ could
find an indication, and the Tecumseh will be turned
into a poor-house for the reception of destitute oil
speculators and their families. Steamboats shall
ply no longer on our waters, and the rails of the
Grand Trunk and Great Western roads will be
sold for old iron, to help to pay the war debt
of the United States. The trees shall all
disappear from the face of the country, and
Senator Sumner will be found on the last
stump, with a copy of the act annulling Reciprocity
in his hand, advocating the Monroe doctrine, and
explaining the beauties of non-intercourse, and a
high tariff. Starvation will stalk through the land
from Sandwich to Gaspe. The inhabitants will
dwindle to skeletons, and so emaciated will they
[ become that not even Bryan's Pulmonic Wafers,
r Canadian Painkiller, nor Dr. Potts can restore their
lost animation. There will be no property holders,
no voters ; the vexed question of representation by
population will be set at rest, and the lion. George
Brown will retire into private life. There will be no
more weddings, no whisky cocktails, no old maids,
no cigars, no briberf at elections, no Mrs. 'Win-
slow's soothing syrup, no babies, no lawyers, no
young ladies promenading the streets, no washing
days, no 24th of May (except the 4th of July), no
sun, no moon, no anything else. The cities of
London, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, &c., will
crumble to pieces, and Phineas T. Barnum will be
found among the ruins picking up the bones of the
inhabitants as relics for his museum. Canada will
be a wilderness to be avoided by travellers, as they
would the Sahara, and future explorers will look in
vain for any traces of past civilisation. Angry
mothers will quiet squalling babies with the threat
of sending them to Canada, and political offenders
in the United States will be sentenced to banish-
ment to this desolate region, as a punishment worse
than death. Let us be prepared, then ; let us ex-
pect our fate with becoming resignation, and show
Andy Johnson, and Seward, and the rest of them,
that Britons may be starved, but they never, never,
never shall be slaves.