TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE AMERICAN TREATY AND THE WAR FACTION.
THE " cutting up" of Lord ASHBURTON'S treaty by Lord PALMER- STOW, which the Ex-Secretary's understrappers announced before either be or they could know with any precision what that treaty was is now before the newspaper-reading public. The PALMER- STOW utensil has been overflowing during the whole week with carpings and cavillings at the arrangements concluded by Lord
ASHBURTON.
The first article of impeachment is one that could only have occurred to a red-tapist : three subjects are embraced by one treaty, instead of each being made the subject of a separate and distinct treaty ! This precious objection deserves notice only on account of the use to which it is turned. The critic is sufficiently intelligent to be aware, that however this violation of office-forms may lacerate his soul, it is little calculated to make an impression upon those who have never occupied a stool in the bureau of Foreign Affairs. But he sagely infers from the circumstance that three topics are embraced by the treaty, that there was an under- standing from the beginning that they were to be taken or rejected together. He assumes that the treaty was drafted before the several subjects it embraces were discussed, instead of being drawn up after the discussion was concluded. And upon this assumption he• engrafts another—that this extraordinary mode of proceeding was adopted by the American negotiators in order to mystify Lord ASHBURTON. These mere assumptions are unwarranted by any shadow of evidence; but they are asserted and reasserted day after day, in order by this iteration to produce a belief on the part of the public that Lord ASHBURTON has been humbugged, and to prejudice people against the treaty before they examine its details. The three subjects so irregularly embraced by Lord ASHBURTON in one treaty are—the boundary from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains; the Slave-trade arrangements; and the mutual deli- very of criminals flying from justice. To the last-mentioned it would be difficult to invent an objection, and therefore it is passed over without formal condemnation. Care, however, is taken to insinuate that it is "quite as much for the benefit of the Americans as for us," and that "it was first suggested by the Americans themselves." These inuendos, which taken apart would be utterly unmeaning, are dovetailed into the other insinuations against Lord ASHBURTON, in a way to excite a hostile feeling against the United States as having overreached and laughed at us. With regard to the Boundary question, it is only the point of the line run in the vicinity of the upper St. John's river that is quarrelled with. On this head, it is not asserted that we have sus- tained any loss in regard to property : "as to so many square miles of territory more or less, that does not signify a fig." It is not denied that we have obtained a short and direct line of communi- cation within our territories from New Brunswick to Quebec. But it is asserted that the line of communication obtained is so near the frontier as to be easily interrupted by the Americans in time of war; and that the boundary fixed upon exposes Canada to be at all times molested by Sympathizers. With regard to the exposed character of the line of road in the event of war, let us take the theta as stated by the critic. According to him, Lord GREY'S Government, after in vain endeavouring to persuade the Americans to accept the boundary proposed by the King of the Netherlands, "declared that England would never thenceforward consent to any so disadvantageous to her." After this declaration, "it was proposed by the British Government to make the St. John's the boundary-line throughout." Now, what does the critic of Lord ASHBURTON'S treaty think would give security to the line of road?—" The line of the St. John would have given us this, if to that line had been added a portion of the southern bank." So the line proposed by Lord Gaiv's Government was as liable to objeetion as that secured by Lord Asnnurcrox. This shows that the objection urged against the latter line is merely taken up by the Opposition advocate, and was disregarded by Lord PaLsteesTosi when in office. The line agreed to might, however, be objectionable, although the critic who condemned it was moved by merely factious motives; and something more will be required than this argumentum ad hominem to justify Lord Asa- BURTON in the eyes of the nation. Nor is that something difficult to find out : the truth is, that no boundary line, which the Ameri- cans could be brought to agree to, would place the line of commu- meation at a sufficient distance from the American frontier to secure it from the danger anticipated. In a military point of view, the line drawn along the declivity of the mountain-range seven miles from its crest is more defensible than one drawn along the nver. But, in the most unfortunate event of a war between this country and America, it would be wretched imbecility on our part to allow the Canadian frontier to be the battle-field, so long as we have ships to blockade the mouths of the Hudson, the Chesa- peake, and the Mississippi. The danger from Sympathizers is one against which no boundary but an impassable desert could secure us : and there are alarmists (as, for example, the projectors of the Afghan war) who fancy even such deserts insufficient. The only fiafeguard against Sympathizers will be fLund in pursuing such a policy towards Canada as shall leave them no materials to work upon there. The captious objections against Lord ASHBURTON'S boundary-line are in themselves nothing, and if possible less when weighed against the advantage of getting rid of one of the many Possible causes of quarrel between this country and America.
With regard to that part of the treaty which bears upon arrange- ments for putting down the Slave-trade, Lord Asunuarou appears to have done as much as could be expected in the present state of that delicate and entangled question. He has not urged the Ameri- cans expressly to concede the right of search : that they will not do. He has not waived Great Britain's claim to exercise a right of search : the temper of this country would not admit of that- But be has concluded an arrangement that may lead to a future convention, in which the proper objection of the Americans to admit Bridal' press-gangs on board their merchant-ships may be respected, and at the same time the proper object of perfecting a great international police of the high seas promoted. This part of the treaty is to be judged by its own merits, not by the comments of Parisian journalism. To object to this or any part of the treaty
because it is not a final bett le in en t , would be ludicrous in any person who stated the objection seriously ; and to enumerate, as
the critic has done, all the points not finally settled, is only to
provoke the question, why no attempt was made to settle any of them during Lord PALMERSTON'S long incumbency ? The ob- jection that everything has not been accomplished, comes with a bad grace from those who accomplished nothing—from those whose aim was to accomplish nothing : for the complaint that the Boundary question has been settled just at the moment that a new argument turned up in favour of the British claims, expresses Lord PALAIER STON'S ideal of a Foreign Minister—one who is always cutting out work for the display of his own cleverness, and never allowing any- thing to be finished. We might stop here, but a few words to bring out into bolder relief the reckless spirit of the railers at Lord ASHBURTON'S treaty will not be thrown away. Old stories are raked up to show that the negotiator has American leanings. One of his speeches in 1825 is recalled to memory—" It is impossible that Canada can continue to be very long a colony of Great Britain." This was said by Lord Asnninixosi as a member of the Whig party, and with.the approval of that party. Lord PALMERSTON was then in the Tory ranks, and if not right he is at least consistent in his reprobation : but his present Whig followers ? Lord ASHBURTON'S speech in 1826 was no expression of undue bias to America, but the expression of an opi- nion—that sooner or later all great and enlightened communities will exercise the right of choosing their own form of government— which we believe was once universally recognized by Liberal politi- cians. If Canada is to remain connected with this country, it must be kept by other and more vital measures than boundary-line ar- rangements. Again, Lord Asenuicros is rated for having in a speech at Boston called that city "the old cradle of liberty." Was it not ? was it not the sacred ground on which the Pilgrim Fathers first set foot in the New World ? It is a hallowed spot in the eyes of the freeman, even though "old Fanueil" and the conversion of Boston harbour into a teapot be left out of the question. But, looking upon Americans of the United States as sprung from the same parents with ourselves—as English both in their virtues and vices—Liberals at least have been accustomed to regard the war of indepeudence in America in the same light that they regard the war between Roundheads and Cavaliers in this island, and, admitting the merits of the Royalists in both struggles, to hold that justice was in both on the side of the Republicans. It is somewhat new, at this time of day, to hear one who professes to be a Whig and some- thing more scandalized by approbation of "successful revolt." BENTHAM taught men to speak lightly of the old Whigs; but what would an old Whig—what would Fox, or evea BURKE, think of the new, could they hear such language ? "Who is silly Billy now?" was once asked of a Liberal Monarch: "Who are Tories now ?" may be asked of those who yelped "keep out the Tories."
This appeal to obsolete prejudices against the Americans is in admirable keeping with the tone virtually recommended to be adopted towards foreign states. We are reminded, that "when a Persian Governor enforces the ordinary customhouse - laws on a Russian merchant, the Russian Ambassador at Tehran insists upon having the Persian Governor sent to him in chains ; and in chains he is sent " ; and that when a Governor of Tangiers gives offence to the French, "they send a ship of war ; the captain demands to have half-a- dozen of the chief Moors bastinadoed in his presence ; and forthwith it is done." And then comes the application : "And does the commerce of these nations derive no advantage from this vigorous ad- ministration of their foreign policy ?--Most undoubtedly it does derive the greatest advantage, and frequently much to the preju- dice of ours." It is to pave the way to the revival of this doc- trine, that the attempt has been made to revive the extinct Tory prejudice that the Americans are rebels to British supremacy; to insinuate that Lord Asnnuavois is half an American in his heart ; and to caricature all advocates of a pacific policy as" ex- treme members of the Liberal party," who wish to concentrate all attention upon home questions, because "they think that in the body politic, as in the body physical, two inflammations cannot co- exist, and they wish that all the inflammatory action should be brought to bear upon the organic changes which they labour to bring about." Almost the language of the Church and King mobs
at the time when PRIESTLEY'S house was sacked! "The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots ": Lord PALMER- STOW cannot get rid of the principles of the first twenty years of his thirty years' tenure of office. He—or the Morning. Chronicle,
"which amounts exactly to the same thing"—insults the leader of the "Sufficient Suffrage" movement, (who disapproves of all war,) and the leader of the Anti-Corn-law movement, (who got up a meeting in Manchester against the Chinese war,) at the very time
that he is ambitious of being made leader of the Movement ; and he denounces the principles of CHARLES JAMES Fox as sedition, at the same time that he is inviting Lord JOHN RUSSELL, the head of the Foxites, to become a Radical along with him ! We have a War faction at home as well as across the Channel, only the leader of the British one is scarcely so brilliant a demagogue as TRIERS.
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