The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-28 00:00:00

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Governor of British Columbia, namely, in lieu of a
joint military, a joint civil occupation of the die-
Ruted territory ! The result of all this parleying
(of this proposition and counter-proposition) being,
that Gen. SCOTT has resolved upon the removal at
once from San Juan----of all the American troops
and artillery ? Alas, no—but, if not that, at least
of all, saving and excepting only Capt. PICKETT'S
little company of fifty soldiers, the original
occupiers or invaders of San Juan. So
the affair rests—until the matter can be
brought to a definitive, and we will hope a mu-
tually satisfactory settlement. All the other com-
panies are ordered away from the island, back to
their former quarters on Oregon and Washington
Territory. Captain PICKETT and his fifty men alone
remain. It is in wretched bad taste--having conceded
so much—that the American Government still in-
sists upon the continuance there of that company of
half a hundred. Besides which, the admission on
their own part of the other concessions, amounts
virtually to an acknowledgment of the illegality
and indecorum of Captain PICKETT'S presence there
with his fifty followers. Against this persistent
occupation of San Juan our rulers ought assuredly
to protest, insisting peremptorily upon the restora-
tion of the status quo ante—happily we cannot say
the War, but at any rate this very serious, and at
one time very threatening Difficulty.
During this lawless pccupation of San Juan by
the Americans, it appears that while the Republi-
can officers there have displayed at all times the
utmost amenity in their demeiznour, behaving,
indeed, from first to last, in a manner, we are told,
than which " nothing could be more correct, officer-
like, and gentlemanly"—others of the United States
authorities have been guilty of outrages in regard
to British subjects, outrages of the grossest
and most wanton description. " For instance,"
writes the Times' correspondent, from Victoria.
under date the 10th ult., " they arrested, fined,
and imprisoned a British subject for selling a
few bottles of spirits on the island, and
only liberated him after he was mulcted in some
of the dollars found in the poor fellow's
pocket, and of which he was eased. Again,
some American, usurping the authority of collector
of Custoins, seized the baggage of Major DE COURCY,
the English stipendiary magistrate resident on the
island, on occasion of his return from a trip on offi-
cial business to Victoria the other day, and the bag-
gage was only restored at the instance of Captain
PREVOST, in command of her Majesty's ship Satellite,
stationed off the island. Both these outrages were
perpetrated under colour of the exclusive sove-
reignty assumed on the first landing of the Ameri-
can forces, which it is pretended justified the ex-
tension of the United States' revenue laws to San
Juan." Certainly, as the correspondent adds—
" Considering that General HARNEY admitted his
proceedings were taken on his own responsibility,
and without authority from the United States'
Government, the commission of such acts as these,
pending the receipt of advices from Washington,
could only have been prompted by wantonness, or
as a direct insult, or on purpose to provoke
a national quarrel." In spite of all which
systematic and insolent provocations, the peace
has, without any derogation from their per-
sonal dignity, or any deprivation of national
honour, been nobly and magnanimously pre-
served by the English authorities out there from
Governor DOUGLASS downwards. It is a fact—that
—which we think redounds to their credit singu-
larly and signally under the circumstances—doing
so all the more because in no one particular has the
original offence, almost we might say crime, per-
petrated by General HARNEY, been in any respect,
even by Implication, condoned by her Britannic
MAJESTY'S representative.

Never has any power /net with more just and
appropriate retribution than Austria. She has
been perfidious—perjured is the fitter word—beyond
all precedent, in Hungary, and combined atrocious
cruelty with the perjury, and now, in the hour of
her distress, Hungary, which might have been her
strength, is the cause of her weakness. She ob-
tained power to perpetrate the butcheries of Arad,
and to abrogate a constitution older in its essentials
than her own, by the arms of Russia : and now
Russia herself flouts Austria with being behind her
time, with " having forgotten nothing and learned
nothing," and with being quite unaware that
" humanity has made great progress since 181 i."
Russia, a parvenu in the family of European civili-
sation, is actually lecturing Austria on being be-
hind her day ! And with good right too ; for
Russia, we must confess, if behind Western Europe,
is making progress. It would be most ungenerous
to withhold from her Government the highest praise
for its firmness in pressing the emancipation of
the serfs. The resistance made by their proprietors
is the measure, at once, of the difficulty of the
task ; of the firmness of the Government ; and of its
enlightened perception of the value to the nation at
large of free as compared with serf labour. We
must judge nations and individuals, not by their
absolute condition, but by their enlightened attempts
to improve it, and thus judged, Russia is far ahead of
Austria. Russia extends liberty, Austria represses
it ; and the former thus stands forward fairly as the
preceptress of the latter.

In thus schooling the stupid unteachable Haps-
burgs, Russia is but repaying the utterly con-
temptible conduct of Austria in the Crimean War.
Her dastardly and selfish measures then can never
be forgotten. She might have said that her obli-
gations to Russia were such that she must in grati-
tude take her part ; or, she might have told Russia
that gratitude itself compelled her to warn that
Power that her proceedings in Turkey were such
an infringement of the rights of independent states
that she must remonstrate and side with the Allies
if Russia went to war ; which course would pro-
bably have saved NICHOLAS and Europe this heavy
calamity. She did neither. She hoped, —she
actually attempted, so far as in her lay—to pilfer a
portion of the Principalities for herself ! She sent
her plundering, robbing, bullying, soldiers thither,
to march on if the Russians retreated, to march
back, if the Russian's turned towards them; and to
stick in the provinces as long as they could ; which
was, till all parties told her that if she did not take
her brigands out of the Principalities, they would
make her. This detestably mean and selfish Power
now finds that instead of gaining territory there,
she has gained the undying contempt and hatred of
her great neighbour.
Sardinia, again, she has hated with the bitterest
hatred, because that state mirrored to all Italy the
hideousnesl of Austrian rule south of the Alps;
and because, to gain an European status on behalf of
Italy, she took part in the Crimean War—a part
of
rt
by noble,
h etrh at
somuck
shown more
er
manly
sense and Russiafriendship
has
ever since. But the great offence was, that
Sardinia proved what the Italians were capable
of. Count CAVOUR, though quite a conservative,
is a Conservative of the English school, one
prizes etaistitutional liberty quite as much as the
hottest Radical whom he resists. And that able
Minister, enjoying the full confidence of a brave
and patriotic monarch, showed to all Europe that
Austrian dungeons, and bastinadoing, and scaffolds
were not necessary to the good government of