ALARM IN CAN ADA—FEDERAL GUN BOATS ON THE LAKES.

Evening Post, Issue 43, 29 March 1865, Page 3

ALARM IN CAN ADA— FEDERAL GUN BOATS ON THE LAKES.

Mr Lincoln has given the requisite six months notice for terminating the treaty betwe n Great-Britain and the United States, by which

each party renounced the right to place armed vessels on the lakes. This is a serious matter. It is always to be regretted when waters once entirely devoted to commerce become the haunts of vessels of war. The gunboats on one side will, of tiourse, be counterbalanced with an equal display of naval force on the other ; and thus the Canadian Treasury will be saddled with a heavy expenditure from which it lias hitherto been exempt. The manner in which this ntw burden is regarded in the colony may be inferred from the following passage occurring in an article of the Toronto Globe :—" So far as the Confederate pirates are concerned, the change will be satisfactory enough. But for our own people the appearance of a number of gunboats on our inland seas is a very different aff dr. The busintss men and property holders of our exposed cities and towns, and those engaged in our lake commerce, will hardly consent that there shall be gunboats on one side of the lakes and not upon the other. That state of things would put us in imminent peril in the event of war. If the Americans had gunboats while we had none, they could make Bhort work of the cities of Upper Canada. Long before we could begin to supply the deficiency, we might have the very points most essential to the defence of Western Canada wrested from us It", therefore, the present purpose of the American Government be fully carried out, there can hardly be a doubt that it involves the providing a a number of expensive gunboats for Canadian defence." ___^___^______