The Express.
London, England, 1853-05-09 00:00:00

AN ADDRESS FROM FRE
ENGLISHMEN.

The Mayor of Newcastle has received through the
hands of the French Ambassador in London, the following
reply of the inhabitants of Nantes to the address lately ,
forwarded to that city by the people of Newcastle. This
interesting document, of which we give below a transla-
Lion, contains about 2,500 names, and is about G 3 feet
loaf. It is mounted on calico, for the purpose of preser-
vation, and should receive a place among the local atchives
se a record of the cordial feelings created by the inter-
change of commerce. The Mayor of Nantes, with the pre-
fect of the Loire, head the list, and are followed by a num-
ber of the first merchants and persons of importance in the
place. And while such evidence of commercial friendli-
ness exists, third are sufficient proofs of the extension of
the good feeling to the humbler classes among the French
people, and an apparent manifestation that the connexion
may not only be one of the interests 6f commerce, but the
no
less real end abiding interests of humanity.
The Ambassador of FlllllOll presents his compliments to
the Mayor of the Town of Newcastle and he has the honour
of sending him enclosed an address of the principal in-
habitants of the city of Nantes, which the courier of the
embassy brought him this morning.
22, Grosvenor-square, London, April 22, 1863.
Reply of the Inhabitants of the Town of Nantes to the
Address of the Inhabitants of the Town of Newautle-upon•
Tyne.
Friends of Great Britain,
Industry and commerce fulfil the reveries of ancient
philoophers—frontiers are effaced, prejudices vanish, the
animosities of asthma disappear.
If there really be • progress, evident, indisputable, and
marvellously realised in the spirit of the people, that pro-
gress is " Peace." Peace has inherited the old popularity
of war.
In 1848, at the close of a revolution which bad stirred up
so many passions, France proclaimed peace. More lately an
august and sincere authority nobly confirmed that attitude
of the republic, in saying " The Empire is Peace,; ' and
trusting in these promises, the country returned to the em-
pire, sheltering, as it has been said, her destinies under •
majestic souvenir of glory, bat careless of adding other
laurels to her military crown.
This inclination towards a pacific futuie is not caprice, Is
not a passing fondness. It is an opinion inherited by the
public from the authority of philosophy and religion.
' Europe, the whole of Europe, without excepting one
country, without excepting cne government, wishes for
peace. There it no longer • warlike nobility, no longer a'
, military knighthood, there are no longer pmfessional
soldiersloving war for the sake of war, or for glory or ooa-

quest.
There are in our day owners of property, merchants,
and workmen, people who think, who love peace for their
own interest, and who certainly would not snake war but
when peace would be • cowardice.
Bog emotion, and all interests, become obstacles to
thee, gigantic murders which have so long :desolated hums-
nity, and impoverished states.
A. French writer has said, " that to cultivate peace is to
turn the last and most ble page of the Gospel." He
has mid truly. And if from these sublime religious thoughts
we descend to commoner and human considerations, are we
not correct in thinking that the enormous resources ab-
sorbed in keeping up large and useless armies, would have
found a much better application in the creation of harbours,
in the formation of roads, and in the foundation of useful
public institutions. A truth deeply felt by one of your
illustrious countrymen, Mr. Cobden, who has so wittily
chastised that perpetual out-bidding of fleets and levies,
that barren agreement of enlistments and armies, which
governments make with each other. The keel of a vessel of
war, said he, is no sooner pad down at Brest, than the
hammer resounds in the workshops of Portsmouth ; a new
forge puffs at Cherbourg, and beheld the sparks of a new
anvil fly out at Portsmouth. Monstrous folly !
The system of armed peace Nu cost France from 1831 to
1849, to the great injury of the national industry, 274 mil-
lions sterling. How true it is, then, as Voltaire says,
writing of the conquests of Louis XIV., that war is a gulf
where all the channels of plenty are swallowed up.
Thanks be to God'. We shall see those things no more.
The passing generations have seen war and wept for it.
The coming generation, those who lay hold on the enjoy-
ment of the moral life and hold the rudder of affairs, know
nothing but the sweetness of peace. They are devoted to
it. War has been condemn( d, irrevocably condemned, by
the greatest captain in modern days, by him who has ren-
dered battles impossible by having conducted them too well.
What then is war, said he, but a trade of savages, where
the whole art consists in being the strongest upon a given
point.
Your letter, Friends of Englund, has not found us indif-
ferent to the sentiments it espressos. We have been