20 FEBRUARY 1841, Page 1

It is one awkward incident of Lord PALMERSTON ' S system of

open questions, that it admits of an accumulation of difficulties, which might be dismissed with comparative ease as they arise in succession, but which baffle • every art when encountered in num- bers. Such is the case with the many existing disputes with the United States. The troublesome question of the Caroline steamer, complicated as it is by the detention of Mr. M`Lson in Lockport gaol on a charge of murder and arson, has lasted so long, that an- other question, not altogether dissimilar, has occurred to double the force of the difficulty. A British war-brig lately seized an American vessel for slaving on the coast of Africa, and she was sent to Salem in Massachusetts for adjudication : the court at Salem pronounced the seizure illegal, and actions of trespass were immediately brought against the prize-master : he pleaded per- sonal immunity, on the score of having acted in obedience to the superiors set over him by his Government : the plea was rejected by the American court ; and the same question, only in a civil in- stead of criminal case, is raised respecting personal and national responsibility for aggressions committed by order of constituted authorities, as that mooted in MiLson's case.

The weight of the North-eastern Boundary dispute is in like manner redoubled by a new Boundary dispute, which is just brought into play by a measure before Congress to extend the authority of the Union over the Oregon territory, whose boundaries are un- settled. Some Border collisions, too, have helped this complication of quarrels in exasperating the American people, to such an extent that they have assumed a more menacing air than they had yet borne : a "great American mass meeting" was preparing at New York when the last accounts left that place, and similar meetings were expected to take place throughout the Union. At several public meetings which had been held in the Border provinces the most inflamed language had prevailed. Such is the disposition of the people with whom the English Government have to discuss some half-dozen matters in dispute, which taken singly and in time might have been disposed of with scarcely an angry word.