The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-30 00:00:00

Obirning :_-1 Alit

LONDON, MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1844.

The Caledonia, which effected her rapid passage
from Boston in thirteen days, arrived, yesterday
afternoon, in the Mersey, bringing, among her other
important papers, including intelligence from Mexico
and from Canada, the penultimate " Message " of the
President, Mr. TYLER. In an early period of thr
month of March next the Presidential plumage of
this gentleman will disappear. It is no wonder,
therefore, if he ruffles it somewhat, and makes
a great show, previously to " moulting." The
old Roman poets had a fancy that the dying
swan, prescient of her approaching dissolution,
always sings her own requiem, by an instinct 01
anticipation. Whether a flickering. President, just
about to go out, can sing as harmoniously as a mori-
bund swan, we will not undertake to pronounce ; but
if the song of the expiring bird be halt* as long as tht
" Message" of the departing Chief Magistrate, a
swan must amply make up in articulo mortis for hall
a century of taciturn existence. We have heard, in
England, of Governments, Cabinets, and Ministers
being de,cribed as composed of "squeezable mate-
rials," which, how little promising so ever before they
are subjected to the "gentle violence" of a pertinacious
badgering in Parliament, are found toyield abupdantly
on the application of adequate pressure. In the
United States the chief officers of the Government
must possess a contrasted power—that of expan-
sibility. It must have required a very high pressure
to raise the steam from the few ideas which Mr.
TYLER has collected in the shape of pabulum fox
the combustion of his Message to the Senatt)
into a volume of bulk enough to fill four
columns and a half of our largest Londot.
newspapers. In point of fact, even for a document
of its class, this " Message" is unusually wordy, un-
reasonably " lengthy." But it does touch some topics
of high interest to countries on this side of the At-
lantic. Mr. TYLER adroitly felicitates " the Senate
and the House of Representatives" on the peacefu:
and orderly conduct of the United States' population
in the various stages of the late election of a Presi-
dent, throughout all the districts in which the vote•
of the vast Electoral College of that country
were recorded. We do not detect any over-
zealous tendency to congratulate his fellow-citizens
on the fact of not having re-elected himself; or any
self-denying admissions that they have done well
choosing one more worthy than himself fur his suc-
cessor to the great office. He expatiates on the ex-
cellency of a political confederacy composed of many
States, each of them supreme as to the direction ano
arbitriment of all matters within its own peculiar
jurisdiction, but entering with other States into a vo-
luntary compact to submit the general government of
the whole to the direction of the majority of all their
citizens, as the sense of that majority is to bt
collected from the Legislative body organised by thi
Federal Constitution. In a further section of hi.
Message one perceives all the bearing of the pro-
minent position which the "Election" occupies in
his exordium. On the subject of the foreign rela-
tions of the United States, he observes, in that quaint
phraseology which is naturalised nowhere else, that
at no former period were the apparent guarantee:
of peace among the various Powers " of that en•
lightened and important portion of the globe, Europe,"
more firmly established. Mr. President TYLER then
directs the earnest attention of Congress to the pend-
ing negotiations for the occupation of the Oregon
Territory, the value and importance whereof he
warmly dilates upon, recurring at the same time tt
certain of his former messages, in which he had
urgently recommended the establishment of a succes-
sion of military posts, to be occupied by soldiers in
the United States' service, on " the long line of lane
travel," for the double purpose of facilitating am
protecting emigration thither. This point is touched
upon with some show of malicious indulgence, as it
it would prove to Congress at large a question the
more agreeable inthe ratio of the disapproval with which
it might probably he regarded in this country. That
such an idea did pass through the PRESIDENT'S mind, we
may infer from the circumstance that, without having
specifically noticed the fact of the proposed Oregon
occupation having been already a matter of disagree-
ment between the United States' Government and
ours, he unconsciously proceeds to notice, in the
very next paragraph, " other matters in difference
between" them. As to one of these, the seizure of
American vessels on the coast of Africa by British
cruisers, the officers of which had acted under the
mistaken impression of such vessels having been en-
gaged in the slave trade, he is pleased to
assume that former concessions of the Bri-
tish Government have already proved that
it admits its responsibility to make good the damage
occasioned by such seizures—under one of the arti-
cles of the Washington Treaty. With all submission,
this is a little too far and too fast. We must have
the argument before, and judgment pronounced by,
our High Court of Admiralty on each of such cases,
before we can encourage Mr. TYLER to expect that
sort of conclusion to these affairs which he affects to
look forward to. It is also possible that these cases
may become, in the ensuing session, the subject of
some inquiry by the British Parliament.
The tone of the other passages of this Message,
except those which regard the improving condition
of the public treasury, are rather lachrymose and
petulant. He regrets that the running of the boun-
dary line between the territories of the United States
and the territories of Great Britain in North America,
—a work of such signal importance to both Powers—
has been seriously retarded, owing to the failure of
Congress to make a timely appropriation, before the
conclusion of its last session, for the expenses of
the United States' Commissioner. Then, the
enlightened policy of the Emperor NICHOLAS in
advancing Russia in her career of civilization
and improvement (!) is spoken of in terms of equal
panegyric with the sagacious policy of "the wise
Monarch" who governs France. Belgium and Brazil
are eulogised, too, for the commercial treaties into
which they have respectively entered with the United
States. But as to Prussia, and the commercial treaty
which the American Minister had successfully ne-
gotiated at Berlin with the Zollverein, on terms which
would have been so essentially advantageous to
the trade and manufactures of the United
States ;—again the Congress had spoiled all. Theii
failure to take this treaty into consideration
within a certain prescribed term, had carried
the matter over that day, which was the utmost limit
allowed for its ratification. The PRESIDENT, how-
ever, infers that Congress would have sanctioned it
and his darling scheme of a Tariff, had they gone
into the: matter : so he has directed the negotiations
to be renewed ; but he speaks coldly of the chances of
ultimate success. Then all the negotiations of the
American Ministers severally accredited to the Go-
vernments of Mexico, New Grenada, Chili, Peru, and
to the Congress of Venezuela, for the satisfaction
of claims preferred against them for compensation due
to American citizens, either still hang fire, or have i
utterly failed hitherto. On the annexation of Texas,
Mr. TYLER speaks out. There is no chance of mis-
taking his notions of political independence—in the
weak ; of political power—in the strong. The doc-
trine he proclaims is of a public morality which
might put MACHIAVEL to the blush, quite as much