The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-17 00:00:00

E:` r .. Z l°-- 0 / I RS :(Jbr - LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1858. No. 27 2.—VOL. VI. STAMPED UNSTAMPED..FIVEPENCE. TILE FRENCH ALLIANCE.-WHAT ARE DRAGON'S TEETH, AND WHO SOWS THEM ? solutions of the Emperor's peace policy which are so sedulously put forward. There is another solution perfectly reasonable and entirely consis tent with all the antecedents of the Emperor which will naturally occur to all who have watched the course which he has taken since his accession to the Throne, and the appreciation which he has exhibited of the French character. The works at Cherbourg and on the coast of France are simply the consequence of the carry ing out of the views which created the splendid Paris of the present day. From policy as well as from a high ambition, it is evident that the desire of the Emperor is that he should be re garded in France as the great Doer ; and that, as France owed to his great Uncle that she was the most extensive empire in the world, so she shall owe it to him that she is the most beautiful and the most complete. We believe these to be the views which actuate the Emperor at the present moment. lie wishes to find occupation for the restless mind of the French nation, and to be come necessarily associated by the people with all that is beautiful and grand, with all that can give France eminence in the arts of peace, and at the same time preparedness for war ; but we do not believe that an idea of invading England has a place even in his innermost heart. TRULY there is nothing new under the sun, and everything that passes over the stage of to-day has its type somewhere in the history of the past. Fashion may alter the dress or mode of present ment, but nothing is essentially new ; and we do not know but that the ingenious Mr. Chucks may after all have been right in his theory of recurrence of events and existences in cycles. The Cadmus of Heathendom was but a type, and it is exhibited now in the nineteenth century in differently well by our contemporary the Times newspaper—the main difference between the two being that the first Cadmus sowed his dragon's teeth in innocence of intention and in ignorance of the nature of the coming fruit; while the se cond Cadmus broadcasts his with the hope in his heart and the conviction in his mind that a crop will come up at the least as disastrous and as destructive as that of his great forerunner. Fleets in the narrow seas that flow between France and England, and armies on the shores that are washed by them, and the men who compose them, filled with irritation, with hostile traditions, and revived hatreds of race, raging to tear each other to pieces—that is the crop which the Times hopes may be the result of its labours. The Royal visit to Cherbourg, which every Christian in either country hopes may add to the security of peace, is the occasion which the Times seizes upon for sowing the seeds of dissension, and for blowing the trumpet of war. There may be some among our readers who have shrunk from the ponderous look of the series of articles which have been published lately, and who do not care to take the trouble to look back. To those we can venture to give an assurance that they will find the pith of them in the speeches in which the Tipstaff delivered his opinions in Gow- SMITH'S Good-natured Man. " What's raised " the bread twopence a loaf? The parly •vous. " What's sent the meat up three-halfpence " a pound ? Why, the parly-vou.s that eat it ! " What makes beer threepence-halfpenny a " pot ? Why, the parly-vows that drink it up." Those were the sentiments of the Tip staff. They arc the sentiments equally of the Leading Journal to-day; only the latter expands into long and imposing-looking articles what the Sheriff's Officer uttered all in a breath in the drinking of the pot of beer, of which the lamentable increase of price was firmly connected in his mind with our tra ditional enemies. Statesmen are assured that the Emperor is introducing French officers into all the kingdoms bordering on India with a view to the invasion of our empire in the East ; the popu lation of our coasts are warned to sleep well armed and with revolvers under their pillows, for no man can tell at what hour Cherbourg may not launch forth an overwhelming force which shall rush at once to the very heart of our kingdom, and destroy its vitality for ever ; while the merchants, the manufacturers, and the money dealers of our cities arc solemnly told that the slackness of movement in the emporiums of trade, and the sluggishness in the demand for the use of capital, are the result of well-founded and deeply-seated apprehensions in Paris no less than in London that the invitation to Cherbourg which her thick-sighted Ministers have per mitted the Queen to accept is but a blind, and that in reality the fair-seeming Emperor is going to fall on us tooth and nail with no more preli minary than would serve as grace to a boiled egg. We shall have more in the same strain anon, no doubt ; and perhaps even while we write, an article is on the stocks and ready for launching, suggesting that the practices as well as the hatreds of the Middle Ages should be revived, and that the two Sovereigns should only meet with a strong grating between them. By men who live in the political world all this is appreciated at its true value. They know the source from whence these articles come ; they are acquainted with the predilections which in spire them, and are familiar with the policy which they are intended to serve, and with the projects which it is hoped they may advance. Men with whom politics are a pursuit or a pro fession are aware that the Times in these articles represents, as it has done in the many others of the same nature which it has been publishing ever since the of the Emperor, not an English but a French Party, and that it is think ing, not of the interests of the British Empire, or of Europe, but of the views of a fallen dynasty of France, whose interests it believes can be ad vanced by sowing dissension between the present Empire of France and the Kingdom of Great Britain, and by instilling into the mind of every Englishman a notion that there is no peace, no progress or security for commerce so long as NAPOLEON 111. sits on the throne that has been so long occupied by the House of Bourbon and the House of Orleans. The habituated politician knows all this ; he knows the pretence of these warnings and the absurdity of these apprehensions ; but the general public does not. And herein lies the wickedness of these articles and the mischief which they may effect if left to do their work unrefuted and unremarked upon. To the general public they seem the outpourings of a well-informed and watchful patriotism, seeing far, and warning sagaciously and timeously. It is for this reason that we have felt it our duty to put whatever portion of the public we may be able to influence on their guard against them, and to recommend them to look and judge for themselves. Anybody who will do this will see that there is ' not the least real ground for all those alarming accession IVIIIG CONSERVATISM. TEE motley aggregate of Parliamentary dupes and expeetants, who still sigh after the restoration of a Palmerstonian despotism, or languish for the revival of a Russellite oligarchy, are just now in a pitiable plight. They have rung the changes on Liberal, semi-Liberal, and ultra-Liberal corn binat ions—have drawn post-obits on the existence of Lord DEnny's Government till even the ex chequer of corrupt, promises was exhausted— have forgotten old pledges and " bolted" new ones—in brief, have "gone the entire animal" in faction, yet all in vain. As the session draws near and nearer to its close, hope sickens within them and doubt settles into despair. Rather would they endure for a month longer the blended sweets exhaled from the reeking banks of the Thames—" the dregs of Limehouse, and " the tribulation of Tower-hill," than realize their defeat and retire to fresh breezes and ever springing regrets. The inevitable recess offers no rest to them—only a pillow of thorns or bed of torture. They will be hag-ridden by the memory of adverse majorities appalled by menacing spectres from the haunted chamber of "Committee-room No. 11." Poppy nor man dragora—Highland moor nor " shall medicine them again to "that they owed "—it seems bu on the Treasury benches, wi LEWIS on his legs and quarter-d: We could really pity their would preserve a little dignity, c Norfolk stubbl = 0 1•4 - p that sweg4 • 7 gut "yestefOlOt , .4" rr with Come • IN •=..- -day in vig, col 6 1 .," ,fr< r distress, ss- OA t .,;; or even .i: ,41 4 4 : 1 44119' ' tr I. ' 4 k •A;(1' 4. • .);!!