AMERICAN FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITION TO AUSTRALIA.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 796, 1 April 1871, Page 3

AMERICAN FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITION TO AUSTRALIA.

"With respect 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 secresy 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 would be moved to send out cruisers in pursuit of 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 Gen. Grant was it so improbable that he would connive at the preparation and departure of such an expedition as at the present, when a joint commision has been appointed for arianging the Alabama claims aud the Canadian Pisheries 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 expedition 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 reception. 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 Governmentin our behalf.—"Melbourne Argus"