The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-06 00:00:00

pressor of Hungary, of Gallicia, and of Italy,
and no sympathy could, by any possibility, be
excited in her behalf. It would be diffidult to con-
vince the British Parliament or people that we
shotild engage in a sanguinary and expensive war,
for the purpose of maintaining the r yeasty of the
House of Hapsburg, or keeping Hungary, Gallicia,
and Italy under Austrian sway.
But, certainly, we could not consent to a parti-
tion of the Austrian dominions between France,
Russia, and possibly Prussia. That would be even
worse than the proposed division of "the sick man's"
assets. England may thus eventually be brought, on
one side or the other, into the scrape. Indeed it
would be almost impossible for her to hold aloof in
anything like an European war. There is a
chivalrous feeling amongst our people, that
induces them always to take the side of " right
against might," a feeling which no Minister
could withstand. If there should unfortunately
be a war, we shall unquestionably have a share
therein, and it is essential, therefore, that every
possible means should be adopted to obviate a
calamity of such fearful magnitude.
If the clause respecting the intervention of a
friendly power, inserted in the treaty of Paris, be
good for anything, it should now be made available.
We know that it was ignored in the case of
Portugal, on the specious pretext that the honour
of the French flag was concerned! That
cannot, however, be asserted in the present in-
stance. It is a mere question, or questions of
policy, and possibly Austria might have greater
objections to British interference than even
France itself. If the judgment of Great Britain
were resorted to there would be some degree of
freedom conceded to the peoples, but between
France and Austria it would be but a choice of
evils, and there would be but little to gain between
Austrian or French despotism.
We do not believe that the Emperor NAPOLEON
will go to the extent that has been dreaded. He
understands his own interests too thoroughly. He
may take a leaf out of the American book, but he
knows where to stop. We have seen several in-
stances of this, and we believe that we shall witness
another. We trust that the threatening aspects
will be dispersed, and that the pe ce of Europe
may be permanently maintained.

The Americans are certainly very thin-skinned.
If our national emblem be the rose—theirs certainly
should be the mimosa. The sensitive plant, in-
deed, would but very faintly typify their extra-
ordinary and morbid sensitiveness. They wince,
not merely at too-near-an-approach, but at the mere
fancy of it. They are perpetually gnawing, with
suppressed anger, at some imaginary offence, or
hypothetical indignity, or supposititious wrong.
Their whole political surface, indeed, scarcely
appears so much to be, as we have termed it, thin-
skinned as actually raw—proud-flesh prickling all
over with diseased sensibility. There is no possi-
bility of the most cautious approach to them, even
with the delicate feelers of diplomacy, without a
risk of wounding this sensibility. Certainly a
rather anomalous, not to say ludicrous, state of
things, when it is remembered to be the normal
condition of that extremely free-and-easy commu-
nity, where society may be described, generally
speaking, as on the loose—the independent and
enlightened democracy to whom we are indebted
for the bowie-knife and the revolver, for the twin
dodges of annexation and repudiation, for a religion
like Mormonism, and for the new politico-military
science of Filibustering.
It has somehow latterly become a mere matter
of course that there should be some source of mis-
understanding, large or small, imminent or remote,
with the Government of Washington. There is
always some peevish protest or other coming across

the Atlantic from the direction of the United States,
When we are bent even- upon conciliating them, if
possible—we are in some unexpected way or another
offending them unintentionally. It was said a little
time back that our neighbours across the channel
affected to regard as an insult the seaside undress
indulged in, alike by Snobbling and Paterfa-
milias, when strolling in wide-a-wake or glengary
along the trottoirs of Abbeville, or along the shady
pavements of the Parisian Boulevards. But a plaint
even more ridiculous than this came to us very re-
cently from New York and Philadelphia. This was
nothing less than an intimation of profound annoy-
ance at a yet grosser insult, directed by England
against the United States. Because, forsooth, on
the first laying down of the Atlantic cable, we could
observe with a grave countenance the preposterous
demonstrations of joy indulged in on the opposite
shore of the Atlantic—demonstrations, in the midst
of which an old salt-water Tack of a sea captain
was serenaded tenderly by torch-light, as though
he were some delicate maiden in book-muslin on a
balcony ! Demonstrations, moreover, in thg midst

of which the New Yorkers set the town-hall of their

fair city in flames, by indulging with an over-bang
of squibs and crackers ! Because JOUN BULL could
not, for the life of him, help grinning while he
looked on in amused wonder at doings such as these
—JONATHAN conceived himself to be flagrantly in-
sulted and aggrieved. A sullen manifestation of
ill humour, which really, under the circumstances,
added but another and a crowning touch of the
ridiculous to the absurdities already particularized.
Scarcely has 1859 dawned upon us, when we be-
come aware of a new bunch of grievances from the
land where the mimosa may be said to be guarded

by the revolver. As a sufficient illustration of the
nature of these remarkable grievances, we will par-
ticularize one of them—the indignant complaint
articulated by America against England through
the United States' moiety of what we may term
the San Juan del. Norte Correspondence.
Be it known, then, to all who may care
to examine into these extremely wonderful occur-
rences, that the American Republic is aggrieved,
is insulted, is outraged, by reason of the monstrous
facts—that Captain WAINWRIGHT, of her Majesty's

ship Leopard, went on board the American steamer
when in the Colorado river, asked if they had seen
any Filibusters, and being answered in the negative
withdrew immediately—that Captain Sir WILLIAM
ALDHAM, of her Majesty's steamer Valorous,
boarded that same American vessel, when she had
cast anchor in the harbour of San Juan, asked a
series of similar questions, and left in the same way
immediately those queries had been answered.
Recollecting that these occurrences took place
within the range of a British Protectorate, that no
armed force was displayed nor any species of inti-
midation, that the American steamer in the last-
mentioned instance was not even for one instant of
time detained, being actually already anchored;
that pacific inquiries alone were put to the Ameri-
c an, which he was free to answer or not precisely
as he himself felt inclined at the moment, and so
forth—it really does appear to be the height of
absurdity to put an evil construction upon all this,
to make a grievance out of it, and to articulate
complaints thereupon through the deliberate me-
dium of a snarling and fretful correspondence.
The dignity of a nation is but poorly consulted by
such contrivances on the part of a spiteful and mor-
bid diplomacy. The conduct of the American
Government in these circumstances becomes, more-
, over, all the more indecorous when it is precisely