A TANKEE FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITION FOR AUSTRALIA.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 983, 3 April 1871, Page 3

A TANKEE FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITION FOR AUSTRALIA.

The ArgiiH, of March 16,. says:—We have recei- eil from Sydney a telegram which, although it comes from a pri -ate source, is.thoroughly reliable. It is to the effect that the Earl of Bel more has received a telegram from the Secretary of State intimating that there is a probability of the colonies being visited.by a filibustering e.\petition from the United States of America, and advising him to prepare for such an occurrence His Excellency the Governor of Victoria and the Chief Secretary decline to give any information on the subject, but there is not the slightest doubt that Viscount Canterbury has received a similar message. "Remarking on the above, in its leading columns the same paper says: —We mention elsewhere the receipt cf a telegram from. Sydney, which lira reached us through a perfectly aurhentic channel, intimating that the Earl of Bel more has baen warned by the Secretary of State for the Colonies that a filibustering expedition has been fitted out in the United States, and that it-' destination is believed to be Australia. We have reason to infer that a similar communication has been recived from the Colonial office by Viscount Canterbury, but is withheld from the public in consequence, probably, of instructions irom home, as Lord Kimberley may have conceived thar, in the absence of more definite information, it would lie impolitic to create what may prove to be groundless alarm in these colonies. Seeing, however, that the information has oozed out in Sydney, we should have thought this would have obviated the necessity for any further reticence about the mat tor on the part of our own Government. With re-pect to the expedition itself, we must be permitted to doubt the fact of its organisation and despatch There are men in America rash, reckless, and resolute enough for anything ; but the risks connected with the outfit and the transit of an expedition directed against such distant ports are so numerous and so perilous that it would require a more than ordinary amount of daring to venture upon this desperate enterprise. Perfect secrecy as to its nature and object could not be relied upon, and the moment intelligence reached England that the filibusters had succeeded in escaping from an American port, the Government at Washington won hi be moved to send out crui-ers in pursuit of the pirates, while the Admiralty would take active steps to secure the interception of the marauders. We think it may be regarded as an absolute certainty that at no time since the accession to power of General Grant was it so improbable, that he would connive at the preparation and departure of such an expedition as the present, when a joint com mission ha< been appointed for arranging the Alabama claims and the Canadian fisheries question, and when the American press is almost unanimous in its advocacy of a settlement of these disputes upon terms honorable and satisfactory to both countries. Discarding, therefore, every suspicion of complicity in the rumored filibustering ex pedition on the part of the United States Government, we are warranted in believing that they will co-operate with our own in giving chase to the pirates, and in visiting them with condign punishment. If the filibusters should evade pursuit and reach these shores, we have sufficient confidence in the means of defence which are already available, to predict that the buccaneers will meet with a warm But, for the present, we must decline to attach much importance to the rumor, while cordially acknowledging the vigilance and forethought evinced by the Imperial Government in our behalf.