The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF' THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—French agriculture is going through a
phase which we are bound to regard with tenderness.
Our case is that of the elder child, who having gone
through the processes of teething, measles, and
whooping-cough, sees with much pity, and a slight
sense of superiority, her brothers and sisters under-
going these early trials. The particular disease of
infancy under which France is now labouring is the
resentment of the agriculturist of the abolition of the
sliding scale, and the free introduction 'of foreign
grain at a trifling fixed duty. The system is in a
fever and the surface is flushed. So the Minister of
Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works has ad-
ministered a cooling draught in the shape of some
very reasonable considerations. An official circular
addressed to Prefects, and through them to the
intelligence and candour of a million small pro-
prietors, is a novelty to British apprehension. We
know of no such treatment, our practice of public
meetings, societies, and a perfectly free press sup-
plying easier remedies. The ulterior considerations,
too, are very different in the case now before us
from anything in our own recent experience.
Twenty years ago, in the prophetic language of
Protection, the aristocracy, the Church, our high
place among nations, and our eternal happiness,
were all said to be involved in a peddling little
tariff of corn duties for rising and falling prices, con-
structed by some crotchety officials. The enormous
issues affiliated on so trifling a question reminded
one of the fabled cherry-stone, which, as it was
dropped in or out of a well, liberated or not a
whole world of preternatural agency. In the pre-
sent case it is the Emperor in whom a large portion
of France sees only a Power whose duty it .is to
obtain a good price for their commodities and to
get them out of their pecuniary troubles. The com-
plainants are not territorial potentates, but legions
of very small people, to whom a few francs are a
serious object. It is so indeed, for the small
proprietors of France are generally deep in debt, and
it is always a battle with them whether out of their
small profits they can pay a high rate of interest to
some one, ready at the first opportunity to take pos-
session of their land. Wifh the majority of such
1 men it is vain to argue ; but there is an increasing
middle class in France,—it has influence, and it can
be appealed to with effect. It is plain from the
Minister's Circular that no laws whatever, at least
no system of import duties, could have raised the
price of wheat in France during the last year and a
half. Wheat is abundant and therefore cheap.
That is the beginning and the end of the affair to
all those simple minds that have not been bewitched
by the sophistries of Protection. The French har-
vest of 1863 was 23 per cent. above the average of
the ten previous years, and, succeeding upon this,
the harvest of 1864 was still 5 or 6 per cent. above
the average. The result was that France became an
exporting country. It is true that she continued to
import a trifle too inconsiderable to be mentioned
from Algiers and other countries—a third per cent.,
that is one-three-hundredth part of the whole con-
sumption of France. There always will be such ex-
ceptional currents, and the wonder is that France has
not imported more from the Mediterranean for her
arid but populous southern coasts. But she has ex-
ported three times as much as she has imported, and
as the larger operation ever rules the less she comes
under the laws of an exporting country. The prices
of an exporting country, however, can only be the
prices of the world at large, for wheat in this state
of things will never command a higher price than
that at which foreigners are ready to buy it. The
corn is exported because it fetches more abroad
than at home ; and any attempt to insulate the
home trade can only end by shutting out a better
purchaser than the domestic consumer. The
Minister always refers to several previous years,
especially the years 1850 and 1851, when wheat
was considerably lower even under the sup-
posed protection of the sliding scale, and with
harvests by no means so good as those of 1863 and
1864. There is now a natural and reasonable cause
for cheapness—namely, abundance. There was no
such cause in 1850 and 1851, and therefore a cause
must be looked for ; and the Minister leaves us to
infer—though he does not expressly say it—that
the sliding scale itself had something to do with
these excessively low prices. A bad market, with-
out even abundance, a little to sell and little
to be got for it, is indeed an agricultural cala-
mity, and this was the calamity of the two
former years alluded to. But nobody can or
ought to complain if he finds the market over-
stocked, and himself helping to overstock it, while
the purchasers do not multiply and their purses do
not grow heavier. No Minister, no Legislature, no
Emperor, no human power can mend that state bf
things. Not, indeed, that it requires mending, for
if prices are lower there is more to sell ; and it
is a comfort to think that the labourer can
obtain more bread to eat, that charity can do her
work at less cost, and that enterprise has received a
fresh stimulus. It is also'to be considered that
when bread is cheap, not only do the poor eat more
bread, but myriads learn to eat it who did not know
the taste before. It is only since the repeal of our
own Corn Laws that bread has become the food of
the Irish peasantry. But they who have once lived
on bread will never descend to a lower food. It
seems rather late in the day for a great nation to
be learning these homely lessons, but the picture
that is raised before the eyes itself accounts for the
tardy progress. What we see is a million of little
proprietors in their blouses, collected round the
knees of a village dame dignified by the title of
Prefect, learning the A B C of commerce. In Eng-
land the class whom it is necessary to inform in these
matters is much more silent, and the work is more
easily done. The conversion of a landowner involved
the conversion of his tenantry as surely as armies
and tribes followed their chief in primitive times to
the font of Christian baptism. As for our labourers,
as they never knew anything about it, they had
nothing to unlearn. But it must go hard with the
national instructors when they have to disabuse a
million heads of time-honoured prejudices, fostered
by the State itself and linked with all their petty
hopes and traffickings. All that they know or will
know about the matter is that they cannot get as
much as they wish for their corn, and are told that
Arabs, Italians, Greeks, Turks, and Russians are
bidding against them. The Minister has to show
that it would answer no purpose to shut them out of
the French markets when Frenchmen themselves ar

going abroad for a market. But why should not
France keep the monopoly of its own market, at
least, and then get as good a position in the foreign
market as it can ? That is the question as it comes
home to a million pigmy intelligences. The French
must have an equivalent for their sacrifices, and
some solid proof that they are a great nation. Can
they not, then, manage the market so as to get the
turn in their favour, and fare a little better than
their tributaries, their foes, and their semi-barbaric
competitors ? The Minister of Agriculture has to
tell them that he cannot manage this. France is a
great nation, but it is not the whole world. The
Emperor is a great monarch, but he cannot govern
the markets of Europe and compel all nations to eat
more wheat than they can grow, and resort to France
to supply the deficiency on her terms. We trust
the Prefects, to whom the Minister first addresSes
himself, will do their duty, as good teachers, to their
respective classes in the several departments, and that
we shall see a school of political economy on the
largest known scale. If precept should fail, the
Minister knows where to go for example. Our own
agriculturists have now had 20 years' proof of that
freedom which they once expected to ruin them.
They find they can swim without corks, and swim
the better for it. What is more, they are not driven
to form factions on the hollow and discreditable basis
of a class interest, and to bring dishonour on a thou-
sand sound principles and sacred causes by a base
alloy of public good with private ends.
POST.—The claim so ostentatiously advanced by
Prussia to be the supreme arbiter of the powers and
jurisdiction of the Germanic Diet, as might have
been expected, has been formally disallowed. The
despatch of Count Bismarck to the Prussian Minis-
ter at Munich has provoked a reply from the Bava-
rian Government whieh easily and conclusively dis-
poses of the pretensions of Prussia to criticise the
action and control the policy of the minor States.
Considered simply as an effort of diplomatic skill,
the despatch of the Bavarian Minister of Foreign
Affairs cannot fail to excite admiration, and in the
minds of many in this country may possibly give
rise to a feeling of regret that all Foreign-office
correspondence does not bear the same evidence of
good temper, urbanity, polished sarcasm, and argu-
mentative skill as are to be found in this despatch.
As no one could have been more conscious than
Count Bismarck that the step which he thought
proper to dictate, in dictating to a minor State the
policy it should pursue, was equally unprecedented,
and, viewed according to the constitution of the
Confederation, arbitrary and unjustifiable, it be-
comes of the less importance to discuss the grounds
on which such pretensions were founded and have
now been disallowed. Count Bismarck did not ex-
pect to convince Bavaria by his note of the 13th of
December : he simply intended to terrify her ; and
if a highwayman stops a traveller, and, placing a
pistol to his head, demands his purse, it can profit
the latter but very little to reason with his assailant
on the obvious illegality of the act which he is com-
mitting. For reasons which are tolerably intellig-
ible Prussia has determined, if possible, on consti-
tuting herself the irresponsible chief of the German
Confederation ; she is desirous, in fact, of,, being
able to say, "La Confederation c'est mm." Dur-
ing the past year both the foreign and the domestic
policy of her Government have been singularly suc-
cessful, and for the first time for half a century her
armies are enabled to boast of victories in the field.
She is a great military Power, and is desirous of
becoming a naval one. Her conquests during the
past few months have given her the means of
realising what until now has only been a shadowy
dream, .and the prospect of a powerful Prussian fleet
in the harbour of Kiel can no longer be considered
either distant or indistinct. Parvenus proverbially
give themselves greater airs than those whom they
seek to imitate ; it therefore happens, in the natural
order of things, that the former Duchy of Branden-
burg should now assume the dictatorship of United
Germany. In his despatch to the Bavarian Govern-
ment Count Bismarck, it will be recollected, cen-
sured the conduct of the minority who in the Fede-
ral Diet opposed the joint motion of Austria and
Prussia for terminating the Federal execution in the
Duchies and removing the Federal troops, and
pointed out the dangers which threatened the exist-
ence of the Confederation if any similar attempts
were made by the minor Powers to thwart the wishes
of the greater. Count Bismarck did not say this in
as many words ; but, by assuming the right of
determining what matters were and what were not
within the jurisdiction of the Diet, and by declaring
that the minority pressed on the Diet a course of
action which it was incompetent to adopt the same
conclusion was equally reached. The right of the
Prussian Government to criticise the votes given
in the Diet by another State of the Confederation
is summarily denied by M. von der Pfortden, the
Bavarian Minister, and the principal portion of
his despatch is devoted to what may be regarded
as the warnings given by Prussia to Bavaria and
the minor States in respect to their future conduct.
To inquire into the justice of the criticism would
be to admit the existence of the right to criticise,
and, in the face of this objection, the Bavarian
Minister writes :—" The idea that subsequent dis-
cussion might lead to a certainly desirable agree-
ment of opinions can have no weight, and the less
so as experience shows that retrospective polemics
hardly ever bring about an understanding."
The most important portion of the Prussian de-
spatch was, however, that in which a general prin-
ciple was sought to be established from what had
taken place in the Diet on the occasion of the divi-
sion on the Austro-Prussian motion, and in which
advice was tendered in respect to the sole means by
which the existence of the Confederation could be
prolonged. Into this field of argument the Bavarian
Minister is willing to follow Count Bismarck, and
without difficulty points out the incongruity of one
member of a federation taking upon himself to de-
termine the limits of the jurisdiction of the whole.
Nor does M. von der Pfordten hesitate, whilst admit-
ting the extreme jeopardy in which the continued
existence of the Confederation stood when by a bare
majority the Great Powers obtained the sanction of
the Diet to the exclusive occupation of the Duchies,
to declare that the danger was solely owing to the
intention of the Prussian Government " to take the
law into its own hands." If the Prussian Minister was
under the impression that Bavaria, as a weak State,
would be content to submit to the dictates of Prussia,
the despatch of M. von der Pfortden must have dis-
abused him of his error. Rightly estimating the drift
of Count Bismarck's note, lie says it " leaves no
doubt as to the determination of the Prussian Go-
vernment, in face of every wrongly-passed resolu-
tion of the Diet, to make full use of the liberty of
action for the preservation of its rights accruing to it
from a violation of treaties ;" and then continues,
" we are therefore almost forced to believe that the
real object of Herr von Bismarck's despatch is to
deter the King's Government from every further
vote in the Federal Assembly to which the Prussian
Government does not acknowledge its right. Should
this be so, we must equally leave no doubt to the
Prussian Government that it is our firm determina-
tion, as hitherto, so also in future, to base our votes
solely upon our own convictions, and only to permit
the fundamental laws and resolutions of the Federal
Assembly to decide upon its competence, and
.not
the will of an individual Government." Politi-
cians who claim to be far-sighted professto
consider the days of the Germanic Confederation
as already numbered, and that the time is not
far distant when some pretext will be seized by
Prussia for declaring the Bund dissolved. Con-
sidered by itself, this would
.probably be no great
evil, for persons of an inquiring mind have long
been puzzled -to discover what good purpose the
Germanic Confederation ever served. The attempt
made some time ago by Austria to reform its con-
stitution failed, and it is not probable that a similar
experiment will be repeated. But the mere dissolu-
tion of the league is not the only event which is be-
lieved to be impending. Whatever doubts may have
existed a twelvemonth since about the true policy
of Prussia, they have now been dispelled. That she
ever intends to quit the Duchies no one professes to
believe, and only the most simple-minded will think
her desire for the acquisition of her neighbours' pro-
perty is now satisfied. The success which has at-
tended her recent attempt at spoliation will induce
her to proceed in the same path, and the immediate
contiguity to her territory of some petty and de-
fenceless States may prove a temptation too strong
to be overcome. Coming events cast their shadows
before, and as Prussia could scarcely have expected
that the pretensions set forth in the despatch to the
Bavarian Government would be admitted, it may be
that she is paving the way to the dissolution of the
Confederation, and its separation into its compo-
nent atoms. If such be in truth her policy, we can
only say that we feel no commiseration for those
who are intended to be the victims. Strong in their
unity the minor States hallooed on the Great
Powers to despoil Denmark ; the time may not be
now far distant when, divided and defenceless, they
may be called on, under almost similar circum-
stances, to protect themselves.

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