The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-26 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 1863.

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The converse of the Apostle's dictum may, we
presume, as a matter of course, be taken for granted :
the familiar dictum about " evil communications."
The influence of mere companionship, in truth,
whether for good or for evil, ages since found utter-
ance in one of those old time-honoured proverbs—
happily defined once upon a time by Earl RUSSELL
(the noble lord speaking of them at the moment
generically) as " the Wisdom of Many and the Wit
of One"—Noscitur a sociis And, in point of fact,
the predominant influence exercised socially by good
as compared with the influence exercised by evil, is
fact tolerably plain and undeniable. Apply this
truth politically—and the result is yet found, even
there, to be one of a kindred character. Associate
together a Despotism and a Democracy—ally inti-
mately any Great Military Autocracy with a purely
Constitutional Government—and so far from the evil
communications of the one corrupting the other,
the ulterior consequence will inevitably and infra •
libly be, in the long run at least, exactly the reverse.
It may be a slow process—it Is a slow process—not
a doubt of it. But, work its way it will for a dead,
or, we would rather say, for a living certainty.
There are these two grand and dominant allies in
Western Europe—allies, intimate and cordial allies,
during these last ten years especially, in peace and
in war France under NAPOLEON, England
under VICTORIA. Their soldiers have fought and
bled, side by side, during these last ten
years, in more than one remote quarter of the
globe. Now in the Crimea, now in far off China.
The two peoples during these last ten years have
been also more or less frequently associated together
in intimate personal relationeliip. Each of them has
held in turn high holiday —France in the Champs
ElP=6:?,s, England alternately in Hydepark and
at South Kensington. Last year the bonds of
this alliance were knit yet more closely together,
by the negotiation of a Commercial Treaty, bridgir g
over the Channel more effectually even, one might
say, than it had already been bridged over by steam
power. A couple of years back the French EM-
PEROR, with a single sweep of his autocratic hand,
had cleared away for once and for all the vexatious
Passport System, hitherto impeding the intercourse
between the inhabitants of the two countries. As
a gracious and enlightened response from England,
in return for this ingenious and magnanimous
act on the part of the French Sovereign, the
Apostle of Free Trade went forth from this
island to France—formally delegated by his
Government to indoctrinate with those commercial
principles his eloquence hod been so mainly
instrumental in winning the triumph for amongst
Ourselves, to indoctrinate with those wise and bene-
ficent principles the haughty and eminently protec-
tive system in vogue there (until his coming) in
imperial France. The good work done by Mr. COB • 1
DIN in Paris was done, it is true, as we felt very
painfully at the time, in a bungling and left-handed
way as it happened. Still—however done—it was
done. Reciprocity Treaty or not—(and as a recip-
rocity treaty it was necessarily and essentially a
retrogressive treaty)—tho Commercial Treaty was
negotiated, signed, sealed, and delivered. When
scanned in retrospect, it almost seems to us now that
in its reciprocative, and, consequently,as but just
now remarked in parenthesis, in its retrogressive
eharec ter, the Treaty, we will acknowledge, may
be accepted at length as having been ioge.
-,lously so designed by its principal nego-
tiator. Mr. COBDEN probably taking as his
guiding axiom at the outset reculer pour
mieux saucer. H.)t-Ftrcr done,, we repeat, there
it unqueitionably is deny : the validity Commercial
Treaty between France and England being a fact
as incontrovertible, in Os way, es the abolition
t already alluded to) of the old-fa.thioned and wholl3
intolerable system of Passports.
As to Freedom of Speech having again been
restored to the French Legislature—well, to a cer-
tain extent that, too, is in a mcabur.; beyond the
reach of contradiction. Not very much Freedom,
it is true, has been restored to the Parliamentary