NEWS IN QUARANTINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 250, 13 September 1856, Page 4

NEWS IN QUARANTINE.

(From the Melbourne Argus of 23rd August.) Captain Byrne has been keeping all Melbourne in excitement for three days with the rumour of some momentous piece of intelligence which he declares himself to have taken into quarantine along with the Marion, and which he will not divulge until that fast-sailing barque is set at liberty. If it should turn out that the news is nothing more than that Mr. Crampton has been dismissed — if all the talk of war with America is merely consequent upon a nautical conjecture of what a suspension of diplomatic relations with America would lead to — if Captain Byrne founds his claim to be precipitately admitted into Hobson's Bay, merely on the ground that we buy the news of how Mr. Crampton has been elimi" nated from Washington — we should be inclined at once to increase the period of

quarantine for ships from the Mauritius, for Captain Byrne's particular benefit. Gratified as we should he, we would condemn him, for the fright he has given us, to remain for another three weeks at least on the quarantine-ground, with no solace but that of reading over and over again the news which he has kept to himself so scrupulously. Perhaps by the end of that time he would arrive at the conclusion that a suspension of diplomatic relations is not quite so formidable an affair as some people appear to think it. Although a declaration of war is always preceded by a suspension of diplomatic relations, a suspension of diplomatic relations is by no means always followed by a declaration of war. We had occasion not long ago,, when Sir Henry Bulwer Lytton was supposed to be our future Governor, to refer to the fact of his having got into some difficulties with the Spanish Government when he was ambassador at the Court of Madrid. The affair ended in a suspension of ambassadorial arrangements between England and Spain ; the suspension lasted long, but it was never considered at all necessary to send cannon into the territories of Her Most Catholic Majesty because she had sent Sir Henry Bulwer out of them. Even the most precise and rigid adherence to international etiquette would not necessitate involving the world in bloodshed because of Mr. Crampton's dismissal, any more than the non-recognition by one another of two persons accustomed to an interchange of salutations in the streets, would necessarily imply that the couple were about to fight a duel. Unhappily, however, our anxiety as to the upshot of the present difficulties between England and America cannot be entirely set at rest by the assurance that Mr. Crampton's dismissal is no casus belli. Circumstances much more likely to occasion war had arisen, and may since have ripened, as indeed they had threatened to do, with alarming expedition. If the enormous calamity of a war between England and America should befal the world, it will certainly not be on account of the paltry enlistment question. The day has gone by when nations drew the sword on such insignificant occasions. The nation of shopkeepers and that country in which the descendants of the nation of shopkeepers carry on their trade with as much mercantile enthusiasm as the parent race itself possesses — these two nations would certainly not consent to have their vast and profitable commercial relations interrupted by warfare, to say nothing of the far more momentous, but perhaps scarcely equally considered, question of the waste of human life, merely because a petty error — since atoned for by apology — arose as to the right of British enlistment in the United States. The aspect of the Central American difficulty gives us far greater concern. The filibustering Walker is encouraged by the American Government ; and it is to be feared, by a very large section of the American public on shore ; and at sea H.M.S. Eurydice is blockading Greytown, and overhauling all vessels that enter the harbour. That under these circumstances some event may occur, or may have occurred, off the Central American coast, which would hurry the two countries into hostilities, we feel to be dangerously far inside the boundary-line of possibility, and we cannot be at ease upon the matter until the news is out of quarantine, or superseded by arrivals with later dates than those the Marion brings. ! It is said that the display of a bellicose spirit towards Britain among American politicians is no more than an electioneering dodge, and some even go so far as to say ! that if war between England and America ' should take place it would be an " electioneering war," and not last long. We trust that even the heat of the American political climate would be unable to stimulate politicians to seek such ends by t.uch means ; but if we err so far, and if in the excitement of a presidential election a war were to be got up as a " dodge," we see nothing to justify a hope that it would be brief. Tremendous as the destruction would be that the British could inflict at the first blow — though New York, and Boston, and the other cities could be bombarded immediately — we have too much respect for the English pluck and resolution of our American kinsmen to believe that they would be daunted by such mischances. If they once tbegan a war they would spend blood and money freely, they would feed upon the internal rescources of their own enormous territory, and would, as the English did in the late Russian war, fight themselves into a, state of martial efficiency. The forces, naval and military,

with which England embarked in the Russian struggle were small and insignificant compared with those which she brought out of that struggle when she had subdued the enemy. We have no fear, indeed, that in a war with England America would conquer either late or soon, but we believe she would evince her extraordinary faculty for " development of resources," and would be able to keep the whole world in confusion for years. We trust more strongly by far that there will be no war with America than we can hope that it would be other than long and terrible if it once began.