The Express.
London, England, 1867-06-01 00:00:00

HIGH wArra_ AT LONDON, Barna,.

IMEI DAT —Moenlnn, Oh. Den Afteenons, 06 bles.
DOMOIIIIOIII-11oenlng. 161Eis Afternoon, lh. 11m.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 1.

Oux neighbours over the water have probably
more than one serious reason for facilitating the
naturalization of foreign residents, which, although
nut mentioned on a recent occasion in the Corps
Legislatif, may very well have influenced the
Government and the majority. The principle of
naturalization is eminently liberal and humane,
and consonant to the spirit of an age in which,
thanks to the conquests of science and invention,
seas and mountains have ceased to divide popula-
tions, and time and distance are suppressed, and
the thoughts of men are not only widened but
winged by the silent messenger, flashing from
coast to coast and from city to city, and freighted
with the good or evil fortunes of the whole
human family. This instantaneous universal
intercourse is insensibly operating a revolution in
the thoughts and feelings of mankind, which
a few years hone will make the idea of nation-
ality a barbarous anachronism. Already it is
beginning to break down the artificial barriers
which war and diplomacy erected ; frontiers are
beoomi ig Custom-house fictions, and the veteran
functionaries who pottered over passports are
among the pensioned curiosities of the past.
_ _ .

Freedom of trade and treaties of commerce
have established a new international reciprocity
of commercial interests. In the capitals and chief
commercial centres of France and England the
same firms are doubly or trebly represented, and
not only among the great bankers and money
dealers of the financial world, but in wholesale
and even retail branches of ordinary trade, mem-
bers of one family aro found making themselves
at home in different countries, and qualifying
themselves at the shortest notice as British,
German, and French patriots. So rapid and in-
cessant is this process of mutual exchange,
so close and constant the habit of intercommunica-

tion in this cosmopolitan age, that nations which
half or a quarter of • century ago would have
sprung at each other's throats at the sight of a
red rag, now laugh at the folly of experimental-
izing on their own vile bodies as food for the com-
petition of gunmakers and the glory of a few Princes
and generals. To the classes whom treaties of
commerce enrich any war in Europe is a civil
war. It is worse than civil war, because it is
fought in cold blood, and without the passion
that makes men insensible to the recoil of the
injuries they inflict. In nothing is the action and
reaction of the industrial upon the moral forces
of civilization more remarkable than in this
community of rival interests which is turning the
old hostilities into harmonious emulation, and
the Champ de Mars into a bazaar. Happy the
day when a hundred thousand soldiers wage a
mimic war before a balcony full of monarchs, and
the people who pay the blood-tax fill the pit and
gallery, and not the stage I People who have
watched the course of opinion in France of late
years have observed a growing indifference to
military glory. Possibly the living presence of
a NAPOLEON on the throne has emancipated his
subjects from the glamour of the name Perhaps
two European wars in sixteen years and three dis-
tant expeditions have suggested to some ingenuous
minds the impious question, cui bout) 1 At any
rate, the peace movement is undeniable. And
though there may be enough of the old leaven in
the country to make it necessary for a military
Government to flatter the fancies of the bar-
racks, it can hardly be doubted that the EMPULOR'S
general policy and personal disposition point to
peace, and have tended to make peace popular
and profitable to the majority of the nation. His
domestic policy, in its commercial and economic
relations, has favoured the interests of peace, and
promoted a taste for peace. Nor have the results
of his wars and his foreign expeditions done much
to counteract this sal•tary tendency. The Natu-
ralization Bill, upon which we commented the
other day, would seem to contemplate a long
period of tranquillity.

It is not on the eve of a furious contest that
strangers are invited to change their country, and
to become candidates fur conscription under an
adopted Hag. Nor, indeed, is the temptation to
claim the rights of citizenship very strong in a
country where every adult male is liable to mili-
tary service, and to forced celibacy, or to a
heavy fine, at the age when he might reasonably
prefer to be marrying and seeking his fortune in
plain clothes. The scheme of army reorganiza-
tion, which is to make a force of 800,000
men the normal peace establishment, is scarcely
of a nature to seduce a German, an American,
a Dutchman, or an Englishman resident in
France to divest himself of his native allegiance

on the chance of picking up a marshal's baton in a
war for the " revindication " of some natural
frontier. Why should even an Italian, or a
Spaniard, or a Portuguese, who has resided in
France three years, whether for buainess or for
pleasure, be desirous of sacrificing the immunities
he enjoys as a stranger, to lose himself in the
rank and file of a French army 'I If no-
thing could be more seasonable than a Natu-
ralization Bill in the year of the great inter-
national federation of art and industry in the
Champ de Mara ; nothing could be less congenial
to such a measure than the Army Reorganization
Bill, which follows it, and the effects of which
it was perhaps, more or less consciously, designed
to counteract by the infusion of new blood into
the native population. This want of new blood is
beginning to be seriously felt in France. It might
be too much to say that there was a positive de-
cline in the population of France. That there is a
positive arrest of the natural development of the
population is proved by the most authentic and
undeniable official statistics. In thirty depart-
' ments we believe there is a decrease of popula-
tion ; but this would only indicate one of those
migratory fluctuations which in a greater or less
degree are continually occurring in all countries,
and are ruled by what may be called the tidal
movements of industry. But taking the country
as a whole, the normal growth of population is
visibly arrested in France, and that physical de-
generescence which has been observed in our own
manufacturing districts is lamentably conspicuous
in the number of conscripts who are rejected for
deformity, stunted stature, or disease. It may be
easily imagined that a military system which
snatches the flower of all the youth of the
nation from their homes and the healthy pursuits
of agriculture and industry, and sentences them
for the best years of their manhood to the
wasting servitude and excitement of garrison and
barrack life, has something to do with this decline
and degenerescence which the population tables
reveal. Other and deeper causes, which lie at
the very root of the national vitality, might
perhaps be suspected. If with the population
tables before him the Emperor of the FRENCH de-
liberately proposes to raise the army to a peace
establishment of 800,000 men, no wonder he
wants " new blood," and would fain transfuse it
into the exhausted veins of the home-born
population by the proms of naturalization. The
wonder would be that the process should prove
effectual.

France is a great enchantress. Her charms
and her seductions make her the CLEOPATRA of
nations. Her language, her wit, her taste, her
irtellect, her sentiment, her cynicism, her
self-assertion—all that is so exquisitely sym-
metrical, luminous, and penetrating in her finely
tempered genius, make all civilized society her
lover and her slave. But, like the favourite type
of her literature, she is loved as the mistress, not
SA the wife. There have been momenta in her his-
tory when all the world rushed with an irresistible
ardour of admiration to her feet--when to be &French
citizen was to be a lawgiver to humanity. But
these were moments when she was not the
CLEOPATRA, but the SIBYL. At the cost of
what long and dreary periods of lassitude,
and self-abandonment, and loss of dignity
and self-respect, has she risen to the rap-
ture of these moments of freedom ! and during
these intervals, renowned it is true for gigantic
feats of arms, and a prodigious splendour of
luxury, and monumental constructions, who among
the admirers of France would willingly have ex-
changed the immunities of a guest for the honours
of a citizen or a subject ? Imperialism may be a
delightful rttime for foreign residents in France
to live under ; but when they are asked to become
naturalised subjects of the Second Empire, they
may remember the reply of the gallant old
bachelor, who was asked why he did not marry a
charming person at whose house he passed the
leisure hours of every day—" But where am I to
" pass my evenings t "

THE time is not far distant when it will be ne-
cessary to come to some understanding, based on
comprehensive principles, as to the position which
our Government is to take up towards those
foreign States which rob our people by borrow-
ing their money and then paying neither interest
nor principal. The number of governments which
have broken faith with the English creditor is by
this time considerable. Some have openly confis-
cated the property entrusted to them, and some re-
pudiate ; while others, without taking the trouble
to do either, content themselves with simply not
paying. The last case which has come before
the public is that of Venezuela, tho Go-
vernment of which, three years ago, ob-
tained a loan from England through the
General Credit Company, assigning as security
the export duties of the Republic, which were to
be paid into the hands of the British Consul.
Twice the payments have been suspended by de-
crees, the Government wanting the money for
its own purposes. The lenders are indignant,
and, as usual, carry their complaints to the
Foreign-office. It is said that Lord STANLEY is
not averse from taking some action in the metter.
But what action ought to be taken ? Is it to bo
understood that the war power of this country is as
a rule to be at the service of those who have been
so unfortunate as to lend their money to a dis-
honest government T Unless we are prepared to
affirm this principle and to apply it universally, it
is not clear what the Government can do. The cir-
cumstances under which these breaches of faith
take place should be considered. We lend our
money with a freedom and facility not found in
any other nation. We are ready to effect • loan
with almost anybody who happens to be tempora-
rily at the head of a government, without much
caring to inquire whether we are dealing with a
settled people having that sense of community
which is one of the notes of a true nation.
In most of these small South American republics
every general is a politician, and almost every
politician is • general, and power changes
hands very often and very suddenly. Every
president or dictator desires, no doubt, to
uphold the public credit, but he reasons in this
way :—" If public credit is to be maintained,
" it is absolutely necessary that a strong govern-
" ment should be established ; but I am the only
" person capable of consolidating public order and
" prosperity ; it is therefore for the creditor's in-
" terest that I should take every measure neces-
" wary for that purpose, even to the extent of
" temporarily employing his dividends." What
can the FOREIGN MINISTER of England do in such
a case f A proud Government is accessible on the
side of its honour ; a strong Government may be
threatened in its power ; but a struggling Govern-
ment may as well fall after confiscating the pro-
perty of the public creditor as before. Any con-
ceivable government of Venezuela would employ
the export duties pledged to England in defending
its own existence, if it were placed in the alterna-
tive of doing so or perishing. To a foreign creditor
it may seem that nothing can better justify the use
of belligerent force than the non-payment of debt,

but the attempt to act on this view might lead us
into very serious difficulties with third parties.
It is found difficult to make a railway company
pay its just debts, although its property lies ob-
vious to the sheriff, because the strict enforcement
of the law would disturb more or greater interests
than it would satisfy ; and the same is much more
true of a Government, on which the prosperity of
a country depends, and which a very little addi-
tional pressure would often destroy. We fear that
there is no effectual relief for the British creditorto
be expected from this source. Nor, perhaps, on the
whole, is it desirable that persons should be en-
couraged to lend money to foreigners of whom
they know little or nothing, trusting to the ability
of their own Government to secure the payment
of the interest. It is better that the lender should
be led to look for security to the character and
resources of the borrower ; and where either of
these are not of the highest class or quality, to
protect himself by an enhanced rate of interest as
an insurance of his risk.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

The Times regards the wisdom of the resolve
of the House of Commons last night to draw the line of
deprivation of one representative at boroughs with 10,000
instead of 7,000 inhabitants, as indisputable, and as a very
moderate step. A more important point is the manner in
which the seats shall be distributed, and here the Times
defends the system of allowing a voter to accumulate or
distribute his votes at his discretion. This, it contends,
would make the privilege of the voters we enfranchise real
by securing for all of them direct representation in the re-
presentative body. In another article, however, the Times
protests against Mr. Mill's plan for the uniform represen-
tation of county electors, and says that such a house as
that imagined in his scheme would be a Babel, a Lilliput,
a chaos, and nothing more.
Viewing the effect which the schemes of enfranchise-
ment must have on schemes of redistribution, the Dade
I News ends it difficult to believe that a man so acute as
Mr. Disraeli can have thought that the scheme of redis-
tribution which he proposed in the middle of March
would be acceptable in the end of May. The house,
however, did not pledge itself to the entire scheme
of Mr. Laing in accepting the duds of it. The new mem-
bers must be assigned so as to preserve an equitable
balance, not simply between boroughs and counties, but
between different counties and boroughs ; and the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer must bear this in mind in the
min of propositions which he has promised to bring
forward for dealing with the new seats.
The Past thinks it not improbable that the remainder
of Mr. Laing's scheme, giving one-half of the 52 seats to
counties, will substantially be accepted.
The Herald says that though the decision was not a
party one, it will embark the house upon a sea of troubles
and delay in an awkward manner the passing of the bill.
The Standard, on the oontrary, thinks that the success of
Mr. Laing's amendment will facilitate the progress of the
measure.

Mr. Disraeli, the Telegraph feels certain, stands no
chance of obtaining assent to his proposed increase of mem-
ben. As things are, the house is acting as a oonven.
tion, and the cabinet is merely a committee entrusted
with the execution of its decrees. The Star siso
says that yesterday's disision has established con-
clusively that the government have lost the context of
their bilL There is no reason why the house should stop
here. Mr. Serjeant Gaselee's amendment that no borough
under 5,000 inhabitants should return even one represen-
tative is as just and politic as Mr. Laing. While regard.
ing the first part of Mr. Laing's motion as beneficial,
the Star denounoes the second part, greatly increasing the
county representation, and as dangerously mischievous. The
blunder or trick would be no sooner discovered than all
the democratic forces of the kingdom would be united in
an attack upon the unduly aggrandised power of the
Lords.

The Daily News and the Herald comment upon the
Consuls' reports in Turkey with regard to the treatment of
the Christian subjects of the Porte. Both journals ob-
serve that the position of the Christians appears to
be improving. Some of the consuls state that with certain
exceptions the Christians oppreas each other more than
the Maohmedans oppress them.