The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-12 00:00:00

01:

LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 12, 1845.

If the real sentimentsof the American people were
to be collected from the tone adopted by that portion
of their newspaper press which assumes to represent
the democratic principle of the federal constitution,
we should be compelled to conclude that the entire
population of the Union supported the President's
policy on the Oregon and the Texas questions, and
were for immediate war at all hazards with Great
Britain. But the Commercial Advertiser has cau-
tioned us against being misled by the " angry talk"
of its compatriot newspapers. It assures us that "it
is a great mistake to suppose that the deep-rooted and
operative sentiments of
.countries like Great Britain
or the United States are habitually expressed by their
fluent orators and writers." It is very true that the
Commercial Advertiser speaks with equal disparage-
ment of the relation which the declarations of the
English press bear to the national sentiment. Having
a very clear conviction, in common with ninety-nine
out of one hundred men in the United Kingdom, of
the fallacy of this latter opinion, we are content to
leave it where we find it. But we have now before
us the most signal evidence to the general correctness
of the assumption in respect of the democratic press
of the States, in an article published in the
New Yorh _Herald, which, for insolent mendacity,
gross ignorance, presumption, and folly, we
have never seen equalled in the most transcendent
flights of Yankee journalism. The blustering arro-
gance of this journalist passes, we suppose, for some-
thing extremely forcible and impressive with its very
extensive body of readers, for an extensive body we
believe them to be. But it impresses an Englishman
with a very humble idea of the average intelligence,
or the good sense of the public, to find it possible
that they can endure, and even sanction, such pitiful
attempts at intimidating the greatest nation of the
earth, by noisy bullying and ridiculous bravado.
With regard to the Orern question, there is one

consideration that we cannot too strongly impress

upon the attention of our readers. To the evils of
war, in the abstract, we assume that no honest man
at this time of day can be so insensible as not to

deprecate their resuscitation to the last moment that
it can be avoided, as the most fatal of moral and
social afflictions that retard the progress of human

improvement. In a war between America and
England there must necessarily be the super-
added aggravations that attach to all contests

between cognate races, speaking one and the
same language, and living under laws and
usages derived from one common stock. Next to a
civil war, a war between two states standing in such
relation to each other involves perhaps the greatest
collision of kindred interests, and habits, and associa-

tions. Entertaining these views, we shall not be sup-

posed to undervalue by one iota the gravity of such a
catastrophe as a war with the United States. We
speak of it with a full appreciation of its responsi-
bilities, its liabilities, and its tendencies. We bear
in mind the circumstances that must make such a war
one of intense and exterminating animosities as long
as it shall last. All this, however, conceded, we
cannot too much depricate the illogical and unstates-
manlike argument that we see occasionally suggested
in English as well as American papers, founded on
the comparative worthlessness and remoteness of the
Oregon territory. It would be easy for us to show
that so far as regards the territorial worth of the
Oregon, this argument is based on deficient or inac-
curate information as to the geography and statistics
of that region. So far as regards its remoteness
the argument proceeds on a total oversight of the
numerous and growing relations of the Oregon with
other territories, the development of which may be
calculated on any day to precipitate hostilities. Now,
since it is apparent, upon authority which all the sub-
terfuges of Mr. GREENHOW or Mr. PoLx. can no
more shake than they could have shaken the intrepi-

dity of VANCOUVER and other British discoverers on
that coast, that all the rights of prior discovery and
legal possession—taking, in the first instance, and of
subsequent occupation—de facto, are in our favour ;
since the rights acquired under these titles by British
subjects have been largely improved to the advan-
tage of British commerce and the extension of Bri-
tish influence; since they have become the objects of
especial recognition and protection in treaties exe-
cuted between this country and other independent
powers; since the actual British proprietary on the
soil, holding immediately under the English Crown,
is an association—the North West Company, which
now incorporates in its own constitution the still
more ancient rights of the Hudson's Bay Company ;
since this proprietary is established under a royal
charter, conceived in the most express and specific
terms, and granted by the SOVEREIGN of these
realms;—on all these accounts, the value or the
worthlessness of the Oregon is absolutely beside
the question. We have solemnly affirmed our
claim. The antagonist claim of the United
States has been as solemnly and unconditionally
repudiated by the Prime Minister in Parliament,
with the concurrence of all parties in the Legislature.
Therefore, the national honour is now distinctly corn-
mitted to the vindication of our title to the Oregon.
It cannot be compromised. Were it the most worth-
less property in the world, such, for example, as a
money bond, or any other undertaking, to pay upon
honour of the Federal Government or of one of the
States—a Pennsylvanian bond or National States
Bank debenture ; if we had once taken this tone and
attitude upon it, we could not possibly recede from
that position. For ourselves, we have little doubt
that the steady maintenance of that position will pre-
clude all necessity for ulterior demonstrations. If
the Government of the United States, contemptible as
it is in respect of any power of independent decision
or action, could really be insane enough to provoke
in the present dilapidated condition of its material
forces of its army, its navy, its forts, the exposed posi-
tion of its principal cities and towns on its Atlantic
sea board, and at the certain risk of bringing upon
the coasts of its southern and its western States a
servile war, waged by the free blacks of St. Domingo
and the British West India Islands, reinforced by
their emancipated brethren of Cuba and the
cruelly used slave races of Georgia, Ala-
bama, and the Carolinas. There are yet
other eisabilities pressing upon America, which
must incapacitate her, or paralyse her powers of re-
sistance. An influence to which her utilitarian
spirit will be far more susceptible, we opine, than to
suggestions of moral justice, or national dignity, is
sapping, if we may credit the American papers, the
foundation of her political existence. Bankruptcy
appears to be fast gaining ground from the ex-
tremities to the heart of the Union. •
A paper says :—" The interest upon the funded debt
of the Commonwealth, in August, will not be paid.
That you may rely on. It is utterly impossible
under existing circumstances,' says a prominent
Member of the House."
This is, to say the least of it, a graceful attitude
to assume at the commencement of a struggle in
which the wealthiest and most powerful empire of the
Old World is to be defied! But it is an exquisite
commentary on the balderdash of the New York
Herald, which reasons on the rhodomoutades of
Irish agitation excitement in Dublin, as if they
were all Gospel truths, or calculated to scare one
English bosom, the resolution of which has once been
formed, on a question of national honour, and sym-
pathies, such as that of the Oregon. But here we
pause. It is by no means our intention to do the
New York Bobadil the honour of repeating his
miserable little barkings at British greatness.

Is there any one of our readers who has a definite
matured idea of the office, functions, and jurisdiction of
a Stipendiary Magistrate ? A magistrate of our police
courts, we mean, under the organisation of a recent
Act of Parliament ? We are so utterly at a loss upon
these subjects ourselves—after perusing our reporter's
statement of certain proceedings before Mr. BOND, of
the Queen-square Police-office—that we shall be glad
to receive some of those new lights that seem to
be illuminating other minds on subjects, our own
views of which appear to have become utterly anti-
quated. If Mr. BOND be right in his conceptions of a
Police Magistrate's duty, we must be extravagantly
wrong. If we are correct in our views of the end and
objects of a Police Magistrate's appointment, Mr. BOND
might as well have been sitting at the foot of the Cadi
of Bagdad as at Queen-square, for any purposes of
redress or aid to be afforded to the QUEEN'S lieges in
Westminster.

Mr. DuNN, a barrister—whose name, we take it, is
not unfamiliar to the readers of Police reports, in
connexion with some by-gone passages of " ill-starred
hopes,"—presents himself before Mr. BOND. He com-
plains that for a long time past he has been annoyed by
a person in plain clothes (who enters the office with him),
and whom he believes to be a constable : that this man
has long been in the habit of dogging the complainant by
following him from the moment of his quitting his lodg-
ings till his return, through every street, square, or
alley he might happen to traverse ; that complainant had
tested the fact of this being an intended watch upon him
and his actions, by purposely taking very short and ab-
rupt turnings ; still the " mysterious stranger" was at
his heels, inevitable as a tax-collector, persevering as a
dun, ugly as an evil ccnscicnce. Mr. Dunn wished to
know whether this person was one of the officers attached
to the Queen-square establishment, and Mr. BOND an-
swered in the negative. Then he very naturally asks the
magistrate if he will take his charge against the police-
man of following him with intent to commit a felony.
Has he no case on which to found such a charge? He was
seen constantly watching his house when he is at home—
when he goes abroad, out starts this Argus from some
neighbouring public-house, and sticks to his skirts the
live-long day, let him go where he will. Surely Mr.
DUNN is amply justified in describing this as an " un-
warrantable and illegal annoyance." What if Mr. Dunn's
eccentricities have brought him, ere this, into notoriety,
in consequence of some affair of the heart—if we recollect
the matter at all ? Is that any reason for his being put
under a surveillance more rigorous than a French
loyalist had to encounter in Paris, through the various
phases of the Revolution? Does the Home Secretary's
system of Post-office eaves-dropping extend to the
Permission of this clearly " illegal and unconstitutional"
practice, known only at this day to the most despotic of
European Governments ? Is there any criminal record,
any conviction for felony extant against Mr. DUNK, that
he should be put out of the pale of that common-law
protection which shelters every free-born Englishman,
not labouring under such disabilities, from all
nuisances of this vexatious and insulting nature?
Let us see how this case stands.—Mr. BOND
refuses to interfere with the accused, or even
ebsjetcltat himhe
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