The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1849-10-08
NEW ORLEANS:
MONDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 8, 1e49.
Piraey and the Round IsIandsrn.

Inc Round Island party has dispersed. The eX-
petition Of which they are said to have been
part, is defeated for the present. Whether il will
be resumed again, and when, are questions upon
which no immediate conjecture can be risked If
Cuba were their destination, the alarm given as
well by the course OF our Government as tina
movements Of the adventures, has postponed indie
iuitely any internal rising, to which this exped.
ton was to be auxiliary. The failure of the co.
operation expected and the unusual vigilance and
augmented military power of the Government, will
prevent for a long time, any good prospect of
successful revolution. Surprising then that Cuba
was the object, the issue has been, without doubt
to strengthen the present Spanish hold upon the
Island.
The adventures who were engaged, according
to the popular belief in the enterprise, which has
been thus bafflsd, are worry badly treated in the
public press. Despemdoes and vagabonds are the
common epithets-and Lynchburg attack, which
we see copied into the National Inteligencer and
other respectable presses, calls them in repeated
passages, pirates, and describes their enterprise as
one Of unmitigated plumber and piracy
This is an unjust and ill chosen phrase. The
objects ofsuch an expedition as this was announced
to be- have none OF the traits Of the infamous crime
OF piracy and as applied To Americans Is extremely
offensive. We remember that a similar phrase was
applied by the British Minister, Mr. Fox, 10 the
American sympathlsers, who were said TO be
organizing expeditions American territory 10 aid
a rebellion in Canada. In an official letter to Mr..
Webster, Secretary Of State ia I54l, he applied
the epilhet American pirates" to the supposed
conlederaies from the United States in the Cana
dian revolt.
MIR. Webster took strong exception to this phrase,
and gave Mr.. Fox prompt lecture upon the pro-
prleres Of speech. He informed Mr.. Fox, that
TO take up arms, or fit out expeditions from the
United States intended TO act against the do
mlnions OF foreign nations at peace with us,
although breach Of our own municipal laws, and
at the risk OF all the consequences Of forletng the
protection Of their own Government, after they had
quilted its own jurisdiction is not piracy in any
sense; and, Mr.. Webster emphaticay says,
" has no analogy to cases of piracy" He put the
case very pOintedly TO Mr.. Fox, that 50 for the
greater part of the last two centuries subjects OF
" the BRUSH Crown have been permitted to engage
in foreign wars, both national and civil, and
with the latter in every stage Of their progress
and that, Fl" in our own times, not only have indi-
"vldua subjects Of that Crown gone alb road to en-
gage in civil wars, but we have seen whole regi-
ments, openly recruited equipped, armed and
" disciplined in England, with the avoWed purpose
" Of aiding a rebellion against nation with which
" England was at peace, "-alIuding to the Spanish
Legion raised and sent to Spain under the com
mand of Col. Evans, Member Of Parliament.
MIR. Webster therefore insisted on the authority
of British doctrines and practices, as we'll as on the
general law of nations, that Mr.. Fox Is designation
Of American adventurers as pirates was unjust and
that whether the revolt be recent or long con-
tuued, they who join those concerned in it, what
ever may be their offence against their own coun.
try, or however they may be treated, if taken with
arms in their hands in the country of the Govern
ment against which the standard of revolt ia car
ried, can not be denominated pirates without
departing from all the ordinary use of language
in the definition of Offences"
We think the Round Islanders as fully entitled
to all the benefits of this Interpretation, were
the Vermonters and New Workers who nterlersd
in the Canadian outbreak of 1899.