The Express.
London, England, 1861-01-29 00:00:00

readiness for a mar, rad a system of intercourse and cam•
mem to maintain peace.

Without going into the details which Mr. Eden
had to discuss with M. de Calonne or M. Rayneval,
to lower the customs duty on our cotton goods,
pottery, and hardware upon their aide, and in ad-
mitting their produce to retain some protection for
British beer and British brandy as liable to excise,
we may quote just one passage expressing his wish
to make a larger and more liberal application of
free-trade principles, and not to insist on a peddling
reciprocity :

With what face lam to propose the importation of
Eneiali cottons and the exclusion of French silks I do not
well foresee. By the other mode which was proposed, I
could perhaps have carried the ems and maintained the
other with little remark ; but in the present mode it would
be n startling rand offensive circumstance. Besides, in this
specilkation of article., we shall give the treaty an appear-
sone in the eyes of Ireland, which it would not have had
under general provisions and B:pees/jots.
It is easy to argue plausibly upon the power of France to
render the whole treaty illusory by general prohibitions
and general augmentations of the duties, but I believe it to
be a much sounder principle that if we obtain from an en-
lightened nation, pomessmg such energy of government, the
same privileges and indulgences as are given to the most
favoured nation, we obtain all that we ought to ask, or can
expect tom cordially executed. In short, you have now
rough t to a point through which Ido not clearly or
safely see my way. But I like perfectly the aspect of the
business amorg to my own notion of conducting it. I
Walt it only etable and right to announce the expedl-
saw
_of fixing dative to partioular articles. I think the idea
a izaprovement to my original proja-t, but I cannot see
the wisdom of risking the treaty upon the din-unions which
this will require.
But even in the strict prosecution of your plan, I could
now, and with the strictest consistency, conclude all the
other parted the treaty ; for nothing can he more con-
sistent than to my, "We are now formally and authenti-
cally agreed, in the names of our two sovereigns, to place
each other upon the present footing of the most favoured
nation. Proeeed then to do it, and to accompany it with
all the regulations that at the same time occur to you for
the benefit otyour merchants, the security of their pro-
perty, d.c. We are further agreed to name certain articles
the duties of which shall be unchangeable during the period
of the treaty. /t is an important consideration and of some
difficulty. We will proceed in it wish good faith, but in
the meantime do not delay the other benefits, respecting
which we have no doubt on either side." This, to my feel-
ing, is plain sense and solidly founded.
I wiII only add that whatever determination you take, it
ought not to be delayed, and I shall wait most impatiently
for further instructions. It is not safe that this business
should languish.

Now we have only to refer to the debates of the
House of Commons last session, and we shall
observe that the course adopted by Mr. Gladstone,
in proceeding immediately upon the ratifica-
tion of the French Commercial Treaty to
obtain a parliamentary approval of its
principle, leaving the details of our new tariffrt
subsequently fixed in committee, gave occasion to
the most virulent assaults of opposition debaters,
who yet profess to cherish the toryism, while they
cannot comprehend the liberalism, of Mr. Pitt—
the best peace minister, if peace had only continued
in his time, that England ever had, not even ex-
cepting PeeL It is really a terrible thought that,
owing to the radical corruption of the French
monarchy and high society in that age (illustrated
by the well-known scandal of the diamond neck-
lace, related here in Mr. Eden's Parisian letters),
those fair prospects of a happy agreement and
goodwill between the several nations of mankind,
which Pitt, like Fox and Burke, delighted to cherish
before the Revolution broke out, should have been
spoiled by the maddest and bloodiest excesses, the
most wasteful and desperate wars that ever dis-
turbed the morality and civilisation of the world.
Such books as this collection of Lord Auckland's
correspondence, bearing testimony to the gentleness
and equanimity of the most experienced and
enlightened minds in that age, when the humane
end tolerant maxims of the eighteenth century, as
as represented by Voltaire, David Hume, and
Gibbon, had prevailed for a moment over the fury
of famatisiam and the lust of martial con-
quest, are deeply suggestive in this point of view.
We are assisted by these two volumes to conceive
the apparent prosperity and tranquillity of
Europe on the eve of that tremendous convulsion
which was to swallow up some incurable ancient
institutions, and give an agonising birth to the
new. In the ambassador's journal and letters from
Madrid, though it presents a great many enter-
taining incidents, we find less important matter
than in the very graphic accounts that M. Huber
wrote to him from Paris, in the summer of 1789,
relating those wild scenes which opened the Revolu-
tion, from the meeting of the States General when
Mirabean began to thunder, to the virtual de-
thronement and humiliation of royalty. Lord
Auckland himself, though a temperate useful,fand
judicious public servant, and an amiable man in
his private life, was not a statesman of a high
order ; yet his papers are of considerable value, as
illustrating within certain narrow limits the social
and political condition of our country in his day.