The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-07 00:00:00

THErls9 EVENENI7, AUGUST 77 1862.

Hungarian firmness, can cherish fora moment.
Neither are we surprised that Mr. LAYARD7though
now merely a shareholder in the Ottoman Bank,
should look at the financial position of Turkey
on its brightest side. In like manner we feel it to
be perfectly natural that Mr. W. S. LINDSAY
should take the most confident view of the perma-
nence of pacific relations between France and Eng-
land when his house is the London agency for a
large French marine company with a capital of
£1,600,000. It is not easy for a gentleman to be-
lieve that we need run a race with a country in
building iron-clid vessels when he is an agent for
building and managing first rate packet vessels in
England, which are to make their profits as French
vessels and through very high French subsidies.
Mr. LINDSAY would be more than an ordinary
mortal, if he could easily imagine to himself that
Frenchmen are very active in building ships of
war which would ever trouble Portsmouth and
Chatham, or that we should ever need Black
Princes and Warriors against France.

We confess we do not like the aspect of this
company. For aught we know fair profits may be
made out of the enormous French subventions. We
are not in a position, yet, to affirm or deny that.
But we also know that very large profits may be
made out of French mercantile companies for carry-
ing on the slave trade. We trust, however, that
Englishmen who have money to invest are not yet
come to be quite indifferent to the bearing of the
money invested on the general interests of their
own country, or that they quite overlook moral con-
siderations. If there be "no friendship in trade,"
there is left, we may hope, something of patriotism
—enough at least to recoil from a manifest though
underhand attack on our naval position.
Seeing that we are not to be outdone in iron-
sides, the EMPEROR appears to think that we may
be outdone in packet ships. The company, on
which Mr. LINDSAY is willing to bestow his influ
ential patronage, for such we may call it, is
neither more nor less than a company to trans-
fer to France the Transatlantic Mail Service, at
present carried on by British packets. The com-
pany is established under an Imperial decree for
performing postal services with the United States,
the West Indies, the Isthmus Panama, and Mexico.
The service to Mexico is now in active operation,
with a subsidy of £148,000 per annum, or 21s.
9d. per mile. The other part of the scheme
is not yet in active operation, but the American
and West India lines, for which eight steamers are in
course of constru tion by English builders, are to be
carried on with a subsidy of £372,000 per annum,
or at the rate of 15s. 4d. per mile, commencing in
July next. Nor is this all the aid to be offered by
French patronage; the French Government
is to find a large part of the capital, and to re-
ceive it back in easy instalments, with scarcely
anything for interest. The contract, we are
told, is for 20 years, and the Government are
also to advance £744,000 to aid in the construc-
tion of the requisite steamships, for which the
company are to pay only £37,500 per annum
during that period !

When we know that the subsidy granted by
the British Government to the Royal Mail Com-
pany for the West India and Brazil services is at
the rate of 9s. 10d. per mile, we may feel pretty
sure that the French Government would not buy
up, if they could, this important packet service, at
this rate, without some adequate reason. And what
can the reason be but that which lies on the sur •
face—the creation, so far, of a French marine ?
France has no commerce with these ports to be men-
tioned with our own, but her Government, at an
enormous cost, offers to become the carrier for all
other nations which have a commerce. It wants,
in fact, sailors. It has ships of war built, or build-
ing, but it has not a seagoing marine from which
to man them. The packet service, which, like our
own, will of course be conducted by ships capable
of carrying guns, will be an admirable nautical
training school, and that, and that only, can be the
object of the French Government. As we under-
stand this business, therefore, every Englishman
who takes a share in the " Compagnie Generale
Transatlantique" will take a share in a company for
manning the French navy.

It is a melancholy spectacle, that we are now
looking at with breathless interest, afar off there in
Sicily. GUISEPPE GARIBALDI, the Italian Hero
and Liberator, retreating there inland among the
more wooded districts of the island! Himself at
the head of a little band of about 800 men and
boys hastily and only partially armed—he
and his followers being slowly pursued and
nearly surrounded by 20,000 of the disciplined sol-
diers of King VICTOR EMMANUEL ! The Minister,
RATAZZI, the while, almost reviling and maligning,
certainly railing against, and shamelessly depre-
ciating the services done to the popular cause in
Italy by the greatest and the most honest cf
living adventurers ! A total oblivion seems to
have descended upon the Royal counsels at Turin
in regard to the historical facts first of all,
that GARIBALDI liberated from the Bourbon yoke
12,000,000 Sicilians and Neapolitans, and, secondly,
that after doing this, GARIBALDI retired voluntarily
penniless and poweriess to his little island home at
Caprera. Before any more invidious comments
are uttered or written upon the course now being
taken by GARIBALDI sinc, he has emerged from his
retreat at Caprera, and again landed in Sicily—it
will be well, it will be but fair and honourable, on
the part of English spectators of these events, if
they will take into account a statement but this
very morning put forth through the columns of our
liberal and ever out-spoken contemporary, the
Daily News. The statement we are about to quote
is advanced by our contemporary upon the autho-
rity of a reliable correspondent. Not of an anony-
mous correspondent—but of one who hesitates
not an instant to authenticate his assertion by his
signature. The name appended to this communica-
tion is that of Wm. DE BOHAN. His state-
ment is thus expressed : Asking himself, first of
all how GARIBALDI was received when he
appeared in the Chamber of Deputies at Turin, the
writer observes--" I will not now answer this
question, as I
dislike recrimination or acrimonious
words on any subject. But having had oppor-
tunities and
means, such as very few have, of
knowing what really passed behind the curtain,
I will content myself with saying
that were I at
liberty, :-.ls a man of honour, to produce such do-
cumentary and other evidence as is within my
possession and grasp, I am sure that public
him
opinion, so far from expressing itself against
doingtor what he is now, as some do, or hesi
tating what to Link, as others do, would speak
with one voice of stern and uncompromising re-
probation df the manner in which Garibaldi has
by turns been cajoled,
deceived, and betrayed by
the very men who now would deliver him over to
imprisonment, exile, not to say death on the scaf-
fold." Nay, having said this, the writer adds—
« I again repeat that it would be painful to the to
speak more plainly, but if calied on to substan-
ri,te my words I will not delay an instant in
dong so, and the world shall then judge." Reading
this
before GARIBALDI b condemned for the
astounding enterprise upon which he has POw
adventured, let us at least know something of the
i
provocations out in which the whole of that extra-
ordinary project has originated.