The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-01 00:00:00

THE FRENCH TREATY.

Some interesting communications have just been
addressed to the Leeds Chamber of Commerce by
M. Boisselier, the French Consul at Leeds, relative
to the Commercial Treaty between England and
France. The substance of these communications
may be thus stated :—The first conveyed, for the
information of the commercial community, the im-
port of two communications received by the Consul
from the French Government, having reference to
the ownership of trade marks, patterns or designs,
and models, and to a reduction decreed by the Em-
peror in the fees now levied for certificates of ori-
gin. Hitherto the law in France in regard to
foreigners provided only for the protection of trade
marks, but the Emperor, giving a liberal interpre-
tation to the words of the treaty, " trade patterns
of every description," had, by decree dated the sth
of June, 1861, extended an equal protection to de-
signs or modele, subject to the regulations of a
memorandum which accompanied M. Boisselier's
letter. In a similar spirit of liberality, the Em-
peror, who on the adoption of the Commercial
Treaty had decided on a considerable abatement in
the dues on certificates of origin, had sanctioned a
further reduction of one-half in the actual fees, and
from the:lsth of October last consular certificates
of origin have been charged 2s. instead of 45.,
and visas or attestations ls. in place of 2s. It was
hoped that thrs reduction would have a doubly bene-
ficial effect—first, of further facilitating commercial
transactions, and then of putting an end to certain
irregular practices which frequently resulted in
inconvenience to exporters. The Consul wished to
impress the fact that the French Government, in
the most liberal manner, had taken successively all
the necessary measures for the easier execution of
the treaty ; Consuls, Vice-Consuls, and agents had
been established in several localities; authorities
had been appointed for the issue and attestation of
certificates and vouchers ; he had himself selected
correspondents in the principal manufacturing
towns of Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, Dews_
bury, &c.; and fees had been twice reduced until
they now amounted but to a nominal sum. These
successive measures would enable exporters hence-
forth to obtain their vouchers on the spot, and to
satisfy themselves of the regularity of their
invoices, instead of resorting to the indirect and
eventually hazardous course adopted by some.
The second letter was explanatory of certain
allegations which had appeared in the Lon-
don newspapers, and which were calculated
to mislead the public as to the manner in which
the details of the Commercial Treaty were carried
out by the French authorities. All the objections
were discussed seriatim at considerable length.
The first allegation was, that no package would be
admitted into France which contained distinct arti-
cies liable to different rates of duty ; but the fact
was, M. Boisselier stated that the restriction ap-
plied solely to some yarns—viz., flax or hempen,
cotton, and woollen yarns, and to linen and cotton
fabrics, and had been adopted with a view to facili-
tate the examination of goods by means of random
samples or tests, and thereby to save importers the
unnecessary delay which in case of mixed packages
would be entailed by a seriatim verification of each
successive article. The second grievance was, an ar-
bitrary over-valuation on the part of the authorities
in the assessment of goods taxed ad valorem, but on
this point the treaty supplied its own remedy by
providing that if an importer had good ground for
disputing a valuation, he had a right to claim a re-
valuation by special experts. To the third assertion
that some goods sent before the Ist of October had
not been liberated on the 25th, M. Boisselier replied
that special precautions were adopted to avoid any
such delay, and he affirmed with confidence that
the Custom-house authorities at Paris wero enabled
to deliver in the course of one day (Oct. 1) all the
' goods that the owners wished to take out. Lastly,

complaint was made of the denial to certain ports of
the privilege of admitting to duty articles taxed ad
valorem, and the writer enlarged upon this aver-
ment, arguing that there was no grievance, as it
was freely agreed to by the English Government in
the 4th article of the Anglo-French Convention that
the French Government should have the power to
designate exclusively the Custom-house of Paris for
the admission of tissues taxed ad valorem. The Em-
peror, however, on the 9th of Sept., being anxious to
facilitate international intercourse, issued a decree
by which eight more ports were opened to the di-
rect importation and admission of these tissues—
viz., Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen, Havre,
Lille, Mulhouse, and Lyons; and had given a fresh
proof of his anxiety to satisfy every requirement,
having by a decree of 14th inst., opened the Custom
House at Strasburg for the importation of British
and Belgian woollen and cotton 3 erns of every kind,
and the Custom-houses at Boulogne, Calais, Dun-
kirk, Valenciennes,:Strasburg, and Chambery had
been also added to the list of those previously
opened for the direct importation and clearing of
textures taxed ad valorem. The French Govern-
ment (M. Boisselier added) could not but learn with
pleasure that their efforts in the fulfilment of their
arduous and gigantic task are duly appreciated
when carrying out the details of the treaty, and
giving importers all the facilities which extant laws
will allow as being compatible with the guarantees
required by the interests of the Treasury and for
the rogular working of bona fide trade and com-
merce. After receiving these communications the
Council of the Chamber expressed their thanks to
M. Boisselier, and assured him that several Leeds
and other gentlemen engaged in trade with France
bore testimony to the generally satisfactory manner
in which the French Custom-house authorities car-
ried out the treaty.

FRAUD ULBN2' B KRUPTCI IN
G-L ABG 0 TV.

During Friday and Saturday last the Glasgow
Circuit Court was engaged in investigating a charge
brought against Reuben Brooks and Frederick
William Thomas, described as merchants, of forg-
ing and fabricating false and fraudulent bills of
exchange, for the purpose of defrauding the credi-
tors of the said Reuben Brooks, who contemplated
obtaining sequestration of his estate. The bills of
exchange were alleged to have been fabricated in
the office of the prisoner Thomas, St. Vincent street,
Glasgow, on an occasion or occasions between the
Ist June and 10th July last, and were for the fol-
lowing sums, viz., three for £3OO, two for £3,000,
and one for £4,000.
Edward Izzard, picture-dealer, London—l know
Brooks, and I have seen Thomas before. I saw them
both in the Prince Albert Tavern, in London, on the
2d July last. Being shown three bills for £3OO
each, I depone that I saw them there on that occa-
sion. The handwriting in the body of the bills was
filled in, but no drawer's name. Brooks wrote the
words, " Accepted, R. Brooks." I also saw these
£3,000 bills now shown me, but they were not
filled up. The words, "R. Brooks, accepted," were
inscribed on that occasion. Being shown a £4,000
bill, I saw it on that occasion too with only the
drawer's name on it. I now recognise it. Mr.
Brooks wrote his name and the word "accepted" on
the bill before any other writing was put on it. On
that occasion Thomas had an appointment with
Brooks. It was kept. Thomas brought these bills
for Brooks to accept. Brooks asked what he wanted
wrah the acceptances; to which Thomas replied that
he was to ask no questions ; that he would take
him through the court, and that he must do as he
told him. Thomas then gave him the three bills
for £3OO, and they were accepted, and so were the
others, as I have told you.
By the Advocate Depute—Brooks asked Thomas
who Watson and Co. were ' • to which Thomas re-
plied that be was a friend of his trading under that
name. In reference to the £4,000 bill, Brooks
asked Thomas who F. G. Smith and Co. were.
Thoma§ said, " Of course, me ; I traded under that
name." Brooks asked Thomas how much he should
draw, and he said that the stamp would carry
£4,000; thereupon Brooks signed his name. Brooks
gave Thomas £25, but I could not say for what.
There were six bills signed on that occasion. Thomas
asked Brooks, when they were signed, if he had the
cash. Brooks pulled out the cash and laid it on the
table. Thomas picked it up, and said he would
leave London next day. Thomas called on me on
the 30th of June, 1861, seeking Brooks. " I found
Brooks for him, and Thomas told him he must have
some money. Brooks wished me to take Thomas
£5, which I did the following morning. Brooks
told me that Thomas was to carry Lim through the
Gazette, but he did not say that he had given him
the money for that purpose.
The Jury found the following verdict ;—" We
find Frederick William Thomas guilty as libelled,
with the exception of forgery, which is not proven;
and we find Rueben Brooks guilty as libelled, with
the exception of fabrication and forgery, which we
find are not proven."
_ _

Mr. Brooks then addressed a few words to the
Court, during the delivery of which he was much
affected. He stated that he had not been aware of
the law of Scotland in regard to those things, and
he had not known that they would do any possible
harm. He had never thought nor intended that
the bills should be used in the manner they had
been. He solicited the mercy of the Court, in con-
sideration that he had three young children, who
were motherless, and whose state would be now
very deplorable.
Mr. Thomas also made a few remarks, towards
the conclusion of which he completely broke down,
sobbing loudly, and weeping copiously, when he
resumed his seat. He stated that he had no in-
tention of defrauding any one in any way what-
ever. He alluded to his respectable parentage
and connexions, and maintained he had been guilty
of no crime. Had he not been in prison, those bills
would never have been used, but while he was there
they had been made use of, and the result was his
position that day.
Lord Ardmillan, in passing sentence, said it was
a very painful matter, and no doubt both prisoners
felt very painfully and poignantly their position ;
but he had only one duty in sitting on that bench,
and that was to administer public justice. Judges
were every day in these courts pronouncing sen-
tences more or less severe against poor ignorant
persons who had never been educated,
who had been trained from infancy to,
and had nothing to restrain them from,
the commission of crime. He would not say the
same of the prisoners at the bar : they had-been
educated, and he was satisfied that when crime was
perpetrated by educated persons they should be
punished severely for it. He found, on looking
back, that fraud not a bit more aggravated than
theirs had been far more severely punished than
he was going to sentence them now. The sentence
of the Court was that each should suffer penal ser-
vitude for four years.
The prisoners were then removed from the dock.

THIS DAY'S MARKETS.

CORN EXCHANGE.

The show of samples of English wheat here to-day was
very small. There was very little disposition, however, on
the part of millers to make purchases ; nevertheless, all
descriptions were held at fully Monday's prices.
Importers of foreign wheat were very firm in their de-
mands, yet no improvement took place in the currencies,
compared with our previous report.

Floating cargoes of grain were in only moderate request
at late rates.

Malting barley met a steady sale at full quotations;
otherwise, the barley trade was dull on former terms,
Malt changed hands slowly at previous rates.
For oats there was a steady demand, and prices were
fairly maintained.

Beans and peas were in moderate request at Monday's
quotations.

In flour very little was doing, yet the currencies ruled
firm.

ARRIVALS THIS WEEK.
wheat. Barley. Malt. Oats. Flour.
Eng1i5h........ 280 i GO i 400 I 1 620 sacks.
Irish
Foreip,-,u........ 7,750 . 290 , C4O j
brls.

BOROUGH HOP.
Very little business is passing in any description of
hops ; nevertheless prices are supported.

WHITECHAPEL.
4s Od to 4s 10d ; and pork, 48
The supply of meat is only moderate• and the trade rules
firm, as follows :
Beef, from 2s 8d to 4s 4d; wagon, 3s to 4s fid i veal
to 5s Od per Sibs. Od

THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSIN OP LORD PALMER-
at Bethlehem Hospital, on
the b odyFr of
szorr.—An inquest was held yesterday before Mr. Sergeant
Payne, Coroner for
Southwark,
From thepavid Davis, aged 67 years, an officer in the
army.evidence it appeared that the deceased, in
o
made an attempt on the life of Lord Palmer-
ston they
(ewa r 18, h
owlB
as Secretary of the War Department at the
time), while walking in the street, by firing a pistol at him.
He was arrested and tried at the Old Bailey on the let of
May, 1818. The jury acquitted him on the ground of in-
sanity, and by the order of the Home Secretary he was
removed to Bethlehem Hospital, where he has remained
up to the present time. Tho warder went as usual on Mon-
day morning to his room to give him his ordinary meal,
when, on opening she door, he found the deceased leaning
against the back of a chair, quite dead. He called for assis-
tance, and the house surgeon came and pronounced life
extinct, and that the decease d had died while in a fit of
apoplexy. The deceased was 24 years of age when brought
to the hospital. The coroner having summed up, the jury
returned a verdict of " Died from apoplexy."

THE AILE47IO,IN WAR.

-.----

Among the many good gifts of Democracy a
knowledge of itself does not seem to be included.
If the Civil War does nothing else for the reading
part of the people of North America, it will, at any
rate, teach them what they are, and what is the
true meaning of the phenomena which surround
them. They can learn little or nothing from their
home orators and their home writers. Of a mob, as
truly as of a. monarch, it may be said that the same
fortune which made them Kings forbade them to
have a friend. They are approached with bound-
less adulation and prostrate servility. A thousand
venal pens are ever ready to transform their vices
into virtues, to falsify the most obvious facts, and
to persuade the multitudinous Sovereign that his
crimes are peoof of matchless virtue and his errors
of more than human wisdom. But America so to
speak, has in these latter days gone beyond herself.
She has become the property not merely of penny-
a-liners and stump orators, but of the whole human
race. The events which are occurring on her soil,
though neither glorious to her sword nor to • er /ice,
are yet of sufficient consequence; to attract to her
the attention of the keenest observers and the most
pungent writers of the day. Her institutions are
explained, her politics are analyzed, her prospects
delineated, and her finance dissected by hands in-
comparably more able than have been for many
years employed upon them. A faithful mirror is
held up to the misguided Confederacy in which sue
may see her face, not as her flatterers have repre-
sented it to her, serene in majesty and terrible in
calm resolution, but distorted with passion, envy,
and hatred, and a burning but ungratified thirst for
revenge.
Of all such writings on American subjects we
have seen none more clear, more just, and more
conclusive than the short pamphlet of M. Sidney
Renouf entitled" Europe and the American Union."
With that inimitable power of etatement aail clear-
ness of deduction which are the acknowledged
characteristics of the higher minds of hiS coun-
try, M. Renouf strips off one by one all the
glosses and disguises under which the real state of
America has hitherto ,been cencealed. Slavery is
not, he says, the cause of the capture. The r
varnment of the Union had done nothing tr
mote the abolition of slavery. The object is to re-
establish the Union, and the North will not com-
plicate the question by a Quixotic effort in favour
of the emancipation of the despised and hated negro
race. The triumph of the North would be the
triumph of slavery. In fact, as friends of human
freedom, we shudder at the concessions which the
North might be induced to make at the expense of
the slave for the purpose of winning back its lost
Confederates. If abolition be ever taken up by
the North, it will not be for its own sake, but as
the last and the deadliest weapon with which to
strike down its antagonists by the desolation of
their hearths and the sacrifice of women and chil-
dren to the lust and cruelty of infuriated barba-
rians. Well may M. Renouf conclude that slavery
is not the cause, nor emancipation in any degree the
object, of the American civil war, and that to such
a ground of sympathy the North is in no degree
entitled. Nor has the North any claim on the
sympathy of the mass of educated men who sin-
cerely wish well to liberty es residing in demo-
cracy. The South does not fight for absolutism,
but against an union which she hes learnt to de-
test. The North does not fight for liberty, but
rather to deprive the South of that dearest of all
liberties—the right to &loose its own Government.
If the Secession be completed, there will not be in
America more slavery or less freedom. We shall
have two Republics instead of ono, and their ri-
valry may at last break through the fetters of that
mediocrity wbish chains everything in America,
down to the same dead level, and leaves her in her
utmost need without a statesmen, en orator, or a
General.

Having thus disentangled the question from cer-
tain considerations which tend to obscure its true
significance, M. Renouf proceeds to inquire whet
is the true policy of England and France with
regard to America. The question, he remarks, is
not one of principle, but of fact. America has been
ever since its independence, 80 years age, a Power
continually increasing in magnitude. Its means of
increase have been absorption and annexation. At
the rate at wino) it was proceeding the Union would
shortly have reached the Isthmus of Darien, and
proceeded to absorb the Spanish Republics of South
Atoerica. It is for this extension of power, no
doubt, that the North is contending, and, should
they succeed ia subduing the South, they would
probably revert to such a line of policy. M. Renouf
might have added that they would by subduing the
South mark the commencement of a policy of con-
quest, and that this new policy, once fairly inaugu-
rated, would very probably find nothing on the
American continent able to resist it. The Govern-
ment of a peaceful Federation would be succeeded
by a reign of military violence, and the equilibrium
of Europe might be threatened by an armed demo-
cracy, powerful by sea end land, and having effec-
tually moulded its ploughshare into a sword to
grace the arbitrary hand of some successful soldier.
Besides, M. Renouf considers that France has a
very heavy material interest in putting an end as
soon as possible to the present sti uggle. Her trade,
as an exporter of articles of tast?, and luxury, and
as an importer of cotton, has suffered very materi-
ally by the civil war, and bankruptcy threatens
many of her principal houses. England and France
have common interests, and ought not to separate.
If the North refuses satisfaction, England will at
once declare war, and France, though at the request
of England she will not immediately take part in
it, will be no uninterested spectator of the contest.
If, on the other hand, America should make repa-
ration, France and England will not let the oppor-
tunity slip without intervening for the purpose of
putting an end to the conflict so fatal to America—
so injurious to the peace and happiness of the civi-
lised world. It may not be,:as M. Renouf anticipates,
that we shall be able to obtain from the South, as
the price of our recognition, even the prospective
abolition of slavery ; but we may not unreasonably
hope that the events which are now occurring will
in one way or another draw to a close that hopeless
and exterminating conflict, fraught with so many
events which disgrace humanity and perplex rea-
son, before it has been carried to an extent which
will destroy the last vestige of a Republic once •
fondly regarded as the last and best guarantee for
human liberty and progress.
Such is an analysis of this very remarkable pam-
phlet. It is well worthy the consideration of the
American public, for it shows how clearly its actual
position is estimated and how keenly its future is
speculated upon by the very people whom the press
and the statesmen of America have sought, as it
appears in vain, to conciliate by all the arts of
adulation. The appearance of such a pamphlet is
cold encouragement to add a war with England to .
the long catalogue of existing embarrassments.
The nation which America has, in her presumptuous
folly, taught herself to regard as her sure ally in
the contest which she has so long sought to force
upon England, which she has sought to conciliate
by the share of the lion's skin represented by Lower
Canada and by the most fulsome adulation, has
taken the measure of her, of her flatteries, her
menaces, and her promises, and contemptuously
rejects them all.--Tines.