The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-28 00:00:00

THE PRESS, AUGUST 28, 1858. a il g reat State. Disclosures subsequent to the debate confirmed their original view of the affair of the Arrow, and even Lord PALmEitsTos found himself driven to that intrepid sophism which defended our attack on Canton by the malignant attem pts at revenge which it produced. All this i t may suit the Times to forget ; but lovers of truth, justice, and mercy will long remember with pride the noble array of statesmen who then united in upholding a policy too straightforward for a diplomatic Premier to relish, and too dis interested for the Times to appreciate. How far this memorable debate, and the ap pointment of Lord ELGIN which was among its practical consequences, has tended to mitigate the character of the hostilities subsequently carried on in China, and have led to the attainment of their object with that "scarcely appreciable sa crifice of human life" of which our contempo rary speaks, we cannot accurately pronounce. But the issue which the Times proposes, " whe " ther Lord DERBY or the limes were at that " time the true advocates of an enlightened " policy, and the advocates of the weak against " the strong," we frankly accept, without claim ing, exclusively for the Conservative leaders the honour of having upheld views which were also maintained by the leading Whigs in defiance of party considerations, and by the foremost men of the Manchester school despite the bribe of pro mised conunercial advantages. No doubt, the phrase "enlightened policy" requires some de finition. In the dialect of Printing-house-square it may imply filibustering with a view to commercial profit, or all those ingenious devices of selfish cunning which are described beyond the Atlantic as "playing the advan tages." But by what logical process the questioner in the Times has persuaded himself, or can hope to persuade his readers, that Lord DERBY, in advocating the rights of China against the aggressive violence of a pugnacious official supported by an English fleet, was not protecting the weak against the strong," we are utterly at a loss to conceive. Surely the event to which we owe his perversely elaborate article only shows more clearly than ever how weak the Chinese are, and how easy it is for England to deal with them by the strono. hand. We might imitate in China the system which we have reprobated when pursued by the United States in Central America; but the incapacity of the Chinese to resist would not transmute violence and pillage into protection. Our contemporary must be careful, lest his morality should prove contagious. Some future highwayman may emulate the arrogant euphemisms of the article which we have been reviewing, and may point to the purse he has just taken as " the triumph of his policy." In truth, both as logician and moralist, the writer has failed outrageously. His logic consists in the very summary process of claiming to have had the best of an argument because he has (possibly) proved right as to a matter which was not in dispute as thus :—" You said the ball was black I maintained to be white. It went up to the ' ceiling, and I knew it would. Confess, then, that you were utterly wrong !" His morality is of a kind which the Jesuits used to be charged with admiring; he takes it for granted that the end sanctions the means. We know not who the Pviiple were whom he speaks of as having held the notion two years since "that the worst evil • that could happen to a Pagan nation is to be " brou g ht i n t o contact w i t h a - Christian people ; " hut we avow that we held at that time, and still hold, that the greatest hindrance to the spread of Christianity in Pagan realms arises from the injustice and rapacity too often exhibited by its professors. So much for our contemporary's matter. Of his manner it is needless to say much. The tone of condescending patronage, the assumption of recognized infallibility, are " much as usual." The rhetorical ornament is "as well as can be exp ec t e d: , In the blended or alternate exhorta tions to repentance and rejoicing, to blowing of trumpets and wearing of sackcloth, there is, per haps, rather a short allowance of fun, with more than the u s ual amount of metaphorical confusion. Rut as under all this figurative disguise there may be hidden some serious doubt as to the View .which the Conservative party will take of th is - opening o f China to the commerce of the world, we beg to assure the Times that that view Rill neither - be painful nor self-contradictory. Having deprecated war, they will not lament over peace ; opposed to robbery, they will re joice in opportunities of fair traffic. But they will not be vehement in exultation. They will not talk of the submission of a semi-barbarian despot as the greatest event of the nineteenth century. They will not see in.the Anglo-French operations on the Peiho a special occasion for glorifying Lord PALmEitsrox. They will leave " harp" and " trumpet," sackbut, psaltery, dul cimer, and all other kinds of triumphal music to blind worshippers of the brazen image which, however, even the Times could not succeed in setting up. 821 about carrying out that design in a more awk ward and ineffectual way, than by being lavish in professions of his desire to preserve friendly rela tions between the two nations, and by hypocri tical civilities to the Queen of ENGLAND. At the same time, confident as we feel that the French Ruler and the French people do not entertain these hostile designs, we by no means should counsel our rulers to neglect ordinary precautions. We by no means advocate the reduction of our means of defence to anything like so low an ebb as to leave our shores in that defenceless state in which the Whig-Radical Administrations left them at the period when the late Duke of WELLINGTON placed on record his protest against all absence of preparation to repel an enemy. But, fortunately for us, aggression requires a tenfold greater amount of prepa ration than defensive warfare. The arma ment which must sail from Cherbourg to effect a landing on our coasts might be thrown into hopeless confusion by one which did not amount to one-tenth of its strength. What constitutes the power and efficiency of an invading armament on land—viz., the soldiers, the horses, the artillery, the commissariat, &c. — constitutes its weakness at sea. We think that England ought always to be prepared at the shortest notice to equip such a force as would throw confusion into a hostile expedition , and would either prevent its attempt to land, or would insure its annihilation in the attempt. Had the Russians thrown their Sebastopol fleet into the midst of the Anglo-French Crimean expedition, and had they opposed vigorously the landing, after their attack by sea, we do not believe that there is a military man of any. authority but will acknowledge that that allied army never would have reached the Alma. Now, there is one thing very certain, and that is, that England has no design of invading France. All that it is therefore necessary for England to do is to maintain always in readiness a sufficient force to assail and deal with a hostile armament, come it from what quarter it may. Fortunately, in the nature of things, as we have shown, that force need not be of anything like the strength of the force which it would have to oppose, for no doubt there is a limit to the power, if not to the amount of an invading force : addition be yond a certain quantity does not add to, but detracts from, its efficiency; and its extent may be increased so as to become utterly unwieldy and unmanageable. Therefore the forces which England need maintain can give no umbrage to France, and can neither excite in her any alarm nor justify her in increasing her military and naval preparations. Thus that ruinous course of rivalry between the two countries—the augmen tation of the armaments of one being made the pretext for the augmentation of the armaments of the other—ought to be wholly avoided ; and the French Emperor, if he be as wise as we believe him to be, will spend the vast resources at his command in improvinc , the condition of his people, and in great works of peace, rather than wasting them in unproductive works, and in con structing navies which he can never want for defence, and which assuredly will not serve him for aggression. M. DE PERSIGNrS SPEECH. TIIE speech—very remarkable in many respects — which has just been delivered by M. DE PERSIGNY, coupled with that which the French Emperor himself delivered in the presence of our Queen, ought, we think, to destroy in men's minds the idea which has unhappily taken hold of them— viz., that all that the Emperor and his supporters say and do to strengthen and improve the alliance with England is said and done with the secret intent of more effectually concealing the hostile designs which they cherish against us, and which they hope one day actively to develop, by some sudden invasion of this country. If NAPOLEON and his supporters really entertain any notions of this kind, the declarations which they make of a real desire to consolidate the friendship of the two nations appear to us a very awkward mode of preparing the way for the realiza tion of their intentions. The Emperor must know, as well as we know, that if he be really making preparations for a sudden descent on the English coast (as many sensible (?) Eng lishmen are fully persuaded that he is making), those preparations could not be concealed from the vigilant eye of the British Government, by any hypocritical professions of a desire on the part of France and her Government to preserve the most friendly relations. Acts would be judged by their own character, and not by the words of the actors. We believe that M. DE PERSIGNY tells the truth, when he says that the amount of intercourse between France and Eng • land has grown to such an enormous degree that a war between the two countries would par take of the character of a civil war ; and that ruin would be brought down, on some of the most important classes in both countries, by any warlike collision. That there are some excitable and restless spirits in both nations who might rejoice at such a conflict, we do not deny; but that the great mass of the French nation would look forward to it with eagerness (as some people affirm), is what we cannot bring ourselves to believe. Those who charge the Emperor with hypo crisy cannot have it both ways. If the haters of England (who are said to constitute an over whelming majority of Frenchmen) understand these professions as put forth to conceal a deep laid scheme for an attack on England, and are therefore satisfied with them, then it can hardly be maintained that what all France sees so clearly is entirely hidden front English vision. Rather what France sees plainly, England will see plainly too. If, then, the Emperor's peaceful words are correctly interpreted, when this sense is put upon them, they do not answer their imputed purpose ; they are simply barefaced falsehoods, which deceive nobody. But, on the other hand, if the French nation take his professions in their literal sense, and if deadly hostility to England be really the ruling passion in their breasts, then it is quite clear that their belief in the sincerity of their ruler. on this matter must create the most dangerous feelings against his person and dynasty. If, then, the veil be so transparent that all see through it, it does not answer its end ; if it be so thick that it cannot be seen through, then is it fraught with alarming conse quences to its wearer. We say, therefore, take these speeches which way you will, if the Emperor cherish a secret design to attack this country, it appears to us that he could not set CORONER'S LAW. THE late lamentable occurrence on the Acton road has afforded another opportunity for the exercise of a function which we regret to see usurped by the dignitaries who preside over the inquisition held by law on the finding of a dead body. This function has more than once led to a most unseemly conflict between the jurisdiction of the coroner and that of the police, productive not only of painful uncertainty in the adminis tration of a severe and strict course of duties, but of a feeling of humiliation and shame that occasion for such childish squabbles should be furnished by an event so awful as the inquiry how a human soul has been sud denly summoned from among us. The function we speak of is the summing up by a Judge of evidence necessary to bring an offence defined by indictment within the letter of a written statute, and this we contend not to be the province and altogether beyond the scope of 4