The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-03-24 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, MARCH 24, 1843

If it must be conceded that the ex-Whig Secretary
for Foreign Affairs is a somewhat clever personage, an
excellent Parliamentary gladiator, and a ready master
of the tactics by which Opposition skirmishes are made
to tell out of doers, as well as in the House which he
adorns, it must be conceded, too, that he combines
with these properties a degree of assurance—impudence
would be the better word—which is perfectly unap-
proachable. Any other man occupying the position of
the noble lord—any other man who, for ten years, had
held the seals of the Foreign Department, and so con-
ducted the business of his responsible office that the
wonder of nine-tenths of the world—of men of every
party—is that the country has escaped being embroiled
with every foreign nation with whose Government he
had the slightest opportunity to bring himself in con-
tact ;—any other man of whom it can be said with
truth that, during ten years of protocolling and nego-
ciation, he succeeded only in unsettling every thing
which he found settled, and settling nothing which he
found unsettled—would have shrunk from such a mo-
tion as that of Tuesday last, by which it was sought to
censure the Ministry and the diplomatic agent, who
have succeeded in arranging, satisfactorily, the most
pressing points of our differences with the United
States, aggravated though those differences were by
his own embroiling finger—any other man situated
with respect to the question as Lord Palmerston is
situated, would have blushed to utter the opinion that
the negociation conducted by Lord Ashburton was an
ill-conducted one, or that the terms of settlement were
unfavourable to Great Britain ; for it must have oc-
curred to such a man that he himself had, at all events,
conducted it worse—conducted it to no good, unless a
state of almost open hostilities and bitter exasperation
between two powerful nations be the end in question ?
and that, with respect to the terms of settlement, if
these are not all that we could wished them to have
been-,-all that at one time we could and ought to have
insisted upon—the cause is to be found in the deterio-
rated position in which we have been placed by his own
acts, of omission or commission.

Lord Palmerston, however, is not an ordinary man,
but, as we have already stated, possesses and exercises
a degree of impudence, in his Parliamentary movements,
which is quite extraordinary. His lordship did not
scruple, on Tuesday, to hold up his own transatlantic
policy in advantageous contrast with that of Lords
Aberdeen and Ashburton. No doubt can henceforth
exist that had the destinies of Great Britain been still
controlled by a Whig Government, and himself been
still protocolling, our differences with the United
States would to this moment have remained unsettled,
and that, in all likelihood, we should have been carry-
ing on a fanatical war with that country, for our escape
from both which inflictions we have abundant reason to
be thankful to the present Administration.
But let us come to the ground of his lordship's com-
plaint. We are told, broadly, that Lord Ashburton
went to business in a very undiplomatic style. He did
not ask about twice as much as he was willing to take.
He did not throw out an advanced post of protocols, as
skirmishers, designed to throw dust in Brother Jona-
than's eyes and ruffle his temper into a false move.
He entered upon no series of manceuvres, made no
feints, threw up no temporary outworks to mask his
main position; but, in a word, declared the terms upon
which lie was prepared to negociate. The answer to
this objection is simple. Lord Ashburton went out to
settle the question. He adopted a plain business mode
of effecting his object; and, instead of haggling like a
fishwife, or a west end smuggler of silks and laces,
proposed the terms upon which he was disposed to
ratify. Be adopted neither the "sic volo, sic jubeo"
style, favoured by Mr. Thomas Macaulay; he did not
descend to the cringing view, of which he is accused
by that voracious fish ; nor did he stoop to the equivo-
que by which Lord Palmerston would have had him
tantalize, and, if possible, overreach the Yankee ; and,
in consequence of his doing nothing of this description,
he effected his object ! With that, we and his fellow-
countrymen are satisfied.

Upon the detailed cavillings against the various
points of the treaty—the settlement of the right of
search and the Creole questions—we shall not enter.
Those cavillings were sufficiently given to the winds by
the able and convincing reply of Sir Robert Peel. We

come, therefore, to the objection that the terms of the
Ashburton Treaty, by which the Boundary question is
settled, are unfavourable to Great Britain, derogatory
to her honour, and prejudicial to the security of our
Canadian possessions. There can be no doubt that,
by the settlement of this Boundary question now, we
have secured less advantageous terms than we were
entitled to have granted us—less advantageous terms

than we could have made good our title to, during any
of the ten years of Lord Paltnerston's trifling with
the question. Upon this point we have had an ex-
cellent evidence in our valued representative, Sir
Howard Douglas—himself for many years, as Go-
vernor of New Brunswick, actively engaged upon a
portion of the disputed Boundary. At the period of
Sir Howard's recal in 1831, the position of Great
Britain, with respect to the territory disputed by the
State of Maine, was the following :—We held at that
time the military possession and claimed the sovereignty
of the territory in question, pending negociations upon
the subject of its final settlement. The Government of
Maine, however, had, a little previously, mooted again
the question of Right ; and Mr. Baker, the agent of
the State, with a view to establish directly his autho-
rity, had seized upon the postman, when passing over
the territory, and, after a short detention, formally
" warned him off." What was the course which Sir
Howard Douglas thought it incumbent upon him to
pursue, in vindication of the rights and honour of his
Sovereign ? We give it in the graphic language of the
gallant officer himself, a report of whose convincing
address will be found in another column.
It will be seen, from that report, that, in 1831, we
held sovereign possession of the disputed territory, and
were enabled—and resolved too—to keep in check the
insolent pretensions of Maine and the prcedatory in-
roads of her borderers. But Sir H. Douglas resigned ; a
Whig Government at home came into power; Lord
Palmerston veered round to the opinions of the Reform
party, and shortly occupied the Foreign office : and
from this time mark the changed position of Great
ißirinitgainufWe had the award of the
by the American Govern-
ment,ted
on their acceptance by
and up to 1835 pressed
iHnoltlhanisd,
the most ob-
Lord Palmerston—an award containing
quarrel.rep udia