The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-06-05 00:00:00

THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR AND
HIS MISSION. _ .

At the Mansion House, in London, on Tuesday
might, in accordance with the long-established annual
custom, the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress
entertained Her Majesty's Judges at a banquet given
in the Egyptian-hall. Among the guests were the
French Ambassador and Madame Leon Say and
Mdlle. Say. In rising to acknowledge the toast of
his health, coupled with that of the President of the
French Senate, M. Leon Say referred to the gene-
rosity of the City of London during the siege of Paris,
at which time he was Prefect of the Seine, and con-
gratulated himself, as the representative of the French
Republic, the sincere
.friend of Great Britain, on
now enjoying the hospitality of the City. He then
alluded to the influence of England on the liberty of
the Press and Parliament in France, and remarked
that his mission was tn one respect useless, inasmuch
as the bonds of friendship between the two countries
were so strong that it would not be possible to undo
them. With regard to commercial questions, also, he
considered his mission in some sort completed, as he
felt sure that England and France would renew before
long, with liberal improvements, the Treaties of 1860.

The Timm of Wednesday noticed the presence of
M. Lon Say at the Mansion House Banquet in a
leader, from which we make the following extract :
The retiring French Ambassador is ne stranger to England,
nor, as he reminded his hearers, to the hospitality of the
Lord Mayor. He is leaving England when his work is but
partially accomplished in order to assume a post of
great dignity and importance in his own country. He
is a freetrader of unimpeachable orthodoxy, in prin-
ciple at least, and he came to this country mainly for the
purpose of negotiating a renewal of the Commercial Treaty
between England and France on terms not less favourable to
freedom of trade than that which Mr. Cobden negotiated
with the Ministers of the Emperor Napoleon in 1860. Now,
however, as in 1860, the French Government is ahead of the
great bulk of the French people in acceptance of the prin-
ciple of freedom of trade. In order to reconcile Frenchmen
at large with the proposed Commercial Treaty, it has been
thought necessary to demand of England certain concest.ions
in the direction of what they hold to be their interests. They
are asked to give up certain duties which are strictly pro-
tective, and England in return is to relax a tariff which is
imposed for purely fiscal purposes. This is perilously like a
concession to the antiquated and vicious principle of recipro-
city, and, moreover, negotiation on this basis is open to the
fatal objection that the present financial condition
of this country forbids the abandonment of an assured
source of revenue. Hence the negotiations with which
M. Leon Say has been "Charged have encountered not a few
obstacles and difficulties. It is probable, as he himself said,
that his brief mission will come to an end before these are
overcome. But we are permitted to hope, from the en-
couraging tone of his speech, that the negotiations are pro-
ceeding satisfactorily, and that a new Commercial Treaty
between England and France will before long be signed by
his successor which will strengthen and consolidate that
feeling of,cordial goodwill and friendship between the two
countries to which M. Leon Say gave expression.
As we have before explained, the main obstacle to the ne-
gotiation of a new Conanieroial Treaty with France lies in
the supposed necessity of concessions on both sides. When
Mr. Cobden negotiated the Treaty of 1860 England had so
many duties on French produce to relinquish that a real
advance in the direction of free trade was more or less dis-
guised under the form of a series of reciprocal concessions.
There was, no doubt, an advantage in this at the time, inas-
much as the French people were more easily persuaded to
barter concession for concession than to accept once for all
the principle of free trade in the abstract. But England
has already given up so much that there is not much left to
surrender, even if the principle of reciprocal concession were
again to be accepted as the ostensible basis of the treaty.
Hence the difficulties which attended the earlier stages of
the negotiation. But between an economist of the force of
M. Leon Say on the one hand, and a Ministry with Mr.
Gladstone at its head and the friend and associate of Mr.
Cobden as one of his colleagues on the other, it would be
strange if some mode of adjusting the divergent views of
the two countries could not be found