Our Foreign Secretary has just undertaken, at the instance of
a firm in the city, to inquire of the United States Government whether it is in ignorance of the fact, that our coasting trade is entirely open to American vessels, although the coasting trade of America remains closed to British vessels. This representation of the coasting trade, however, as it has been forwarded to Lord Malmesbury, does not set forth all the facts. These is compara- tively little parallel between the coasting trade of the United States and that of England. There is a nearer resemblance in our colonial trade with the mother country which is open to American vessels—so far as our navigation laws are concerned. But for the removal of such anomalies we must trust more to the progress of free-trade than to official correspondence ; and the general advance which this country has made under free-trade is the best form of teaching by example.
Some of the leading London papers are wrath at the parting compliments left by Mr. Nugent with the American citizens on the borders of the new British colony in the Far West. Ap- pointed by the American Government as a Commissioner to assist in preventing collision between the British authorities and the American citizens in that somewhat wild and irregular part of the world, Mr. Nugent lays down his charge on returning to the East with a violent attack on British institutions and a hint that the British are savages. The American Government has evidently made an unlucky appointment in Mr. Nugent; but it is not the first instance of a man's showing his character
• after he has received a trust. Mr. Nugent is an Irish editor of • the Mitchel stamp, and he seems to be one of the most bigoted champions of Mitchelism—a superstition quite as little regarded amongst the Americans as it is amongst the English.
