2 AUGUST 1845, Page 12

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

ENCROACHING POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES. A FEW years ago, some citizens of the United States were in- vited by the Mexican Government to settle in Texas; a number of their countrymen followed ; and before long the immigrants set up the standard of revolt, and declared the province they

i had been invited to settle n an independent republic : the United States citizens who did this now declare their wish to be annexed to the United States, and that Government sends troops to protect them against Mexico. The same manceuvre is in progress in California. A number of United States traders have formed establishments in the neigh- bourhood of Monterey; some United States agriculturists have been invited or encouraged to settle in the valley of the river Sacramento. In all the ephemeral revolutions of California—the successive attempts to declare the province an independent re- public—the settlers from the United States have taken an obtru- sively active part. As yet, the inhabitants of Spanish race are a majority in California, and refuse to separate from their Mexican countrymen ; but as soon as the Anglo-American settlers become the majority—and immigrations from the United States are daily swelling their numbers—the project to declare California an independent republic will be carried through ; and who can doubt that the next step of the citizens of the United States by whom this is effected will be to apply for admission into the Union ?

No unbiased person will deny that these are, to say the least, suspicious proceedings. The law of nations recognizes a right on the part of civilized nations—a right exercised with no sparing hand by the United States Government itself—to taboo for its own use a larger extent of territory unoccupied, or occupied only by savage tribes' than their population can immediately fill up. For any state by force of arms to appropriate territory thus tabooed by another, would be a breach of international law. For a state to encourage its citizens to settle emigrants in such a ter- ritory, to look quietly on while they quarrel with the Govern- ment before a dozen years pass over their head, violently eject the constituted authorities, and declare themselves an independent republic, and then to receive overtures of "annexation" from them and send troops to their assistance—if not a breach, looks very like an evasion of international law.

The lust of the United States Government and people to ap- propriate the territory of their neighbours is not confined to the Southern frontier. Passing over the popular cry, encouraged by the President, that the whole of Oregon must be theirs, as palliated by the absence of any final decision in that case of dis- puted possession, the language in which Lieutenant Maury, a Government employe, is allowed if not encouraged to write about Canada, has nothing equivocal in it.

"Look at the map: the Eastern waters of Lake Huron reach within twenty or thirty miles of Lake Ontario. A straight line across here, from one lake to the other, is the natural boundary of the United States. It was never intended that a great country like this should have its parts separated as they are here, by the most military and grasping nation in the world. Here you see a long strip of foreign territory obtruding itself between two States of the Union, and reaching down for several degrees of latitude into the very heart of the country. • * France, nor England, nor any other nation of the Old World, would _permit such dangerous proximity, such thrusting of foreign territory beyond the safe and natural linnts.of national boundaries. Nor should we, the greatest of the New, permit such a thing longer than it can be honourably avoided."

The "most military and grasping nation in the world" almost to a man approved of the Ashburton treaty, which awarded to the State of Maine a long strip of land protruding into the British territory exactly as the peninsula betweeen Lakes Huron and Ontario protrudes into the United States territory. This eager- ness of the citizens and rulers of the Union to round their terri- tories at the expense of all their neighbours, is as inconsistent with the principles on which their political constitution is based as the maintenance of slavery. Even in Europe, it is now the national character of the inhabitants that decides to what state a territory shall belong. This principle restored to Germany in 1814-15 extensive tracts on the West side of the Rhine ; this principle regulated the division of territory between Belgium and Holland. But the citizens of the United States, like the European despots of old, claim territories on the ground that they are necessary to their military defences, regardless of the views and wishes of the occupants. The inhabitants of the peninsula of Canada West are the most prononce English (or Scotch, who are still more national) of the Canadians. They believe that the connexion with England is conducive to their interests ; they are anxious that the career of civil and military employment in England should remain open to their children as British-born subjects. But the free citizens of a republic, which exists by virtue of the axiom that the will of the citizens is the sole and sufficient groundwork of a state's independence and form of government, are eagerly looking out for an opportunity to compel the "State of Toronto" to annex itself to their Union, by force of arms.