The Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1860-09-13 00:00:00

WHAT IS THE TREATY TO BE?

WHEN shall we know the full depths of the
degradation to which this country has been sub-
jected by Mr. COBDEN and Mr. GLADSTONE ?
After all that has been said, and said truly,
against the Treaty and Budget, it would seem as
if we had yet to learn fully ,the besotted nature
of these measures into which the country has
been entrapped, as if in a delirium. Few could
have read the words addressed by our worthy
and venerable townsman Mr. WILLIAM BROWN,
to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce the other
day, without feeling that Mr. GLADSTONE'S con-
demnation had been irreversibly pronounced by
one whose great experience, moderate and inde-
pendent views and Liberal political tendencies,
give irresistible weight to his judgment in such a
question. Much has been said by the advocates
of the Budget, because it has removed trifling
duties from some few hundreds of unimportant
articles; "but," says Mr. BROWN, "that is hardly
sufficient, in my estimation, to compensate for the
embarrassments in which he had involved the
common transactions of life. I have told the
Chancellor of the Exchequer that I have been
fifty years in business in this town, and had
never remembered any Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer so embarrassing the transactions of life
as Mr. GLADSTONE had. To the letters which I
addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer I

certainly received replies ; but I fancied that in
these the question had been fenced rather than
answered. I think that Mr. Gladstone ought
really to be ashamed of hinzsef to have embar-
rassed us so much." Such, indeed, is the testi-
mony of the merchant princes of Liverpool gene-
rally and of the trading community at large.
But, after all, we do not know the worst. Mr.
BROWN subsequently remarked, in the same
speech : Ido not know exactly what the
Treaty is to be ;"—neither does any one. We
have been bound hand and foot and given
over to Louis NAPOLEON, to be dealt with
according to his tender mercies. Our merchants
and manufacturers have been under the humilia-
tion of proceeding in deputations to Paris to
plead for terms from the Frenchman. Oh! ye
departed spirits of Waterloo ! wherefore did ye
expose your lives to destruction on the battle-
field and shed your blood in achieving a barren
victory? Speak of Louis NAPOLEON avenging
Waterloo ! Has he not done so already, and
thus, in a new sense, realised the truth of his
great uncle's taunt, "Those English, they never
know when they have been beaten !" Is it not
to have been beaten—by diplomacy, at least—
for Englishmen to have gone as it were
on their knees to Paris and begged for
merciful consideration to English interests at
the feet of a BONAPARTE or his myrmidons?
Have not some of these mercantile deputations,
on arriving at the French capital, been cavalierly
sent to the right about after being domineeringly
informed that they had come too late, and that
the important questions they had come to discuss
had already been disposed of? The English peo-
ple are really in the dark as to the true scope and

practical bearing of some of the most important
clauses of the Treaty, and they seem little likely
to have much to say in their interpretation.

The latest development of this treacherous
compact is a demand on the part of the
French Foreign Minister at Paris, and his
Consul at a British port, to give to all French
ships in English ports a preference which
is denied to our own vessels. The thing
seems incredible; but, the demand being beyond
all question a fact, the audacity of the motion
is unparalleled. This is a species of French
invasion we were not prepared for. What
opinion must M. THOUVENEL entertain of the
sobriety of the English nation, when he thins
that we have entered into an arrangement for
pushing aside our own mercantile navy, even
in our of ports, in deference to the interests of
that of France ? What can he think of the
English people, if he supposes for one moment
that we would tolerate such an agreement, even
supposing the terms of the Treaty to bear
such an interpretation ? We need scarcely
recapitulate the facts with which our readers are
already familiar. The Newcastle people have
been startled by the claim of the French Consul
there, made under special directions from M.
THOUVENEL, that, under the tenth section of the
Treaty, the same exemption from local :dues as
that which is enjoyed by the vessels of freemen
of the port, but denied to all other British ship-
owners, should be extended to French vessels. The
value of this privilege is said to be equal to £5O
a year on every vessel of the value of a thousand
pounds ; and, supposing the claim to be estab-

lished, it would give French shipowners a cor-
responding advantage over British owners in
general. Now, we shall not enter into any dis-
cussion as to the legality of the claim. We

look upon its admission as virtually impos-
sible. Every instinct of English human nature
proudly and peremptorily rebels against it ; and
it must not, shall not, be. But what shall
we think of the men who drew up a treaty in
terms so loose as to permit such an insult to our
national dignity—to say nothing of good sense ?
What shall we think of the men who have dared
solemnly and formally to put forward such a
claim, under any pretence whatever ? It all
comes of employing such men as Mr. COBDEN,
and tolerating such Ministers as those of the
Whig Coalition. Will Englishmen continue
to endure this horrid French nightmare ; or
will they take the earliest possible opportunity of

letting the authors and abettors of this Treaty
and Budget, which have so embarrassed and
degraded the country, with an emphasis not to
be mistaken, that they have had enough of such
treasonable bungling, and will have others to
administer the affairs of the Kingdom who know
how to preserve our commerce and navigation
from ruinous and suicidal, because unequal, com-
petition, and who have the courage to perform
their duty to the State without succumbing to
the humiliating and disastrous dictation of cotton
lords and Manchester statesmen.

THE PIONEER OF THE GREAT NATIONAL
VOLUNTEER FORCE.

THE Volunteer Corps of Liverpool may differ in
many respects, but there is at least one point on
which it is gratifying to find they are all agreed,
namely—in the desire to express their acknow-
ledgment and high appreciation of the conduct
and zeal of Lieutenant-Colonel BOUSFIELD in his
persevering endeavours on behalf of the Volun-
teer movement. It has been admitted, on high
military authority, that Lieut.-Colonel BOUSFIELD
was the Pioneer of a movement which led to the
formation of the Great National Volunteer Force;
and we think it must be the opinion not merely
of Liverpool, but of London and of Manchester,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, and all the other great
towns, as well as the counties, that such eminent
services, not to a corps or locality, but to
the nation at large, deserve some real and
substantial mark of recognition. Let not
any of our fellow-townsmen, or fellow-country-
men at a distance, suppose for one moment
that this is a proposal originating in merely
personal feelings of consideration towards one
of the most unpretending and unassuming men
bearing a commission in the Volunteer Army;
far less is it any desire to arrogate to Liverpool
any undue credit in a movement which has been
so nobly responded to from every quarter. The tes-
timonial to Lieutenant-Colonel BOUSFIELD ought
to have nothing merely personal or local about
it. It may or may not be true that he is the
efficient officer we think him ; but it is unde-
niable that he is admitted to have been, as
we have said, the pioneer of the whole move-
ment. The only question then is this—Does.
the nation feel grateful to the Volunteers and
to the man, however humble, who by his judi-
cious conduct, undaunted zeal, and persevering
endeavours led to its national adoption ? Will
the nation hesitate to mark its appreciation of
that man's efforts ? A subscription has been
headed by some four hundred pounds ; and a
local committee, treasurer, and honorary secre-
tary appointed to. carry out this object. Will
other 'towns and cities hesitate to take up the
movement, and promote a subscription that shall
prove again, as has been often done before, to all
the world, that the British nation knows how to
mark their sense of true services on the part of
any of its sons, be his rank, station, and circum-
stances what they may ? This is, we say, no
mere Liverpool question. It is now for the
whole country to say whether it recognises in
Lieutenant-Colonel BOUSFIELD the .pioneer of our
grand national self-defensive organisation.