The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-26 00:00:00

rcted would Ise completed about the time of the
Greek Kalends, or thereaway. But, once more, it is
no affair of ours. In neither of the objects cot:ltem=
plated by the engineers who have planned these un-
-vieldy works, or by the Government which has au-
thorised them, does Ragland either feel, or pretend to
that she has the most distant right to intermcddle?

If it be the will of the French Crown, its Ministers,
and the Legislature to proclaim to the whole world
a chronic dread that some foreign enemy may force.
a passage through the iron-bound frontier provinces
of France, and sit dawn before the capital in
the centre of that great kingdom for the formal
purpose of besieging it, why, in the name of wonder,
,hould the British Government or the British nation
trouble their heads about the matter ? If the French
think themselves not yet sufficiently lowered in the eyes
of Europe by the extravagances, absurdities, acid almost
incredible inconsistencies of which their war charlatans
have been guilty during the last six or eight months,
why should they not consummate the unfinished task
by such a record of pusillanimity as must for ever si-
lence all future murmurs about " national humiliation"
by which Europe has of late been deafened? Little
Sperta despised the paltry safeguard of stone walls ; her
masonry was her indomitable manhood, shielded by which
the Spartan women slept securely, boasting that for gene-
rations they had never seen the smoke of an enemy's camp,
It is one among the many proud consciousnesses of
England, that in no part of the United Kingdom is
there a single fortified post, save the only two grand
naval arsenals. Were the spirit of the British race so
fallen, that, although more a martial than a military
people, our countrymen were seriously to undertake
the scheme of surrounding London with walls and bat-
teries, we know what would be thought of us by the
rest of mankind, and what would speedily befal our
arms. We know that other Powers would not long
hesitate to insult our flag—we know that the wooden
;calls of England would perish soon after the erection of
brick or granite ramparts. On the other hand, were
this country so to degrade herself, it would nevertheless
be officious and impertinent in surrounding States to in-
trude upon the people of England their advice or obser-
vations, or still more, their remonstrances upon such
purely domestic undertakings. It is true that Moscow
and St. Petersburgh are destitute of all efficient works of
defence ; that Vienna and Berlin are equally unprotected.
But assuredly were the Russian, Austrian, or Prussian
Governments to commence a system of fortifications
tor the security of those capitals even on the most for.
addable scale, it is scarcely possible that M. Thiers
himself could have the effrontery to complain of it.
We are therefore slow to believe that, whatever com-
munications in the nature of mere remonstrance may
have been transmitted by the allied Governments to
that of France, either since the retirement of M.
Thiers or previously, the proposed works for the de-
fence of Paris can have formed the subject of any of
them. Upon the utter futility and folly of such an un-
dertaking, with a view to the repulse of a foreign
enemy, it is needless to say a word. A fortress
occupied by a population of nearly a million of souls
cannot be effectually defended, except by an
army strong enough for the open field. An
enemy too weak for siege or storm would suffice
abundantly to establish a rigorous blockade, to
scour the country throughout a circuit of many
miles, cut off supplies of fuel, provision, and other
necessaries, throw shells from long distances, to pro-
duce destructive conflagrations, and thus harass and
starve both citizens and troops into an inevitable sur-
render. But that, again, is no affair of ours. French
taxes, not English, are to pay the damage. In conclu-
sion, we must remark, that if neither England nor the
allied Powers can put forward any justifiable pretension
to interfere with France because of her thinking proper
to defend her metropolis from a foreign invader by
means in her own opinion more trustworthy than the
hearts of her population or the arms of her troops, and
therefore that the construction of a great surrounding
rampart may fairly be completed without asking leave
of anybody, far less have any strangers a right to re-
monstrate or find fault with her, for permitting tha
King's Government to build a series of detached forts,
the sole purpose of which can be to iritiandate the
turbulent inhabitants of Paris, and to remove every
obstacle to such measures of coercion or repres-eon
as he who commands the army may consider to be
advisable for the overthrow of all resistance to biz
power. The detached forts have an end avowedly dis-
tinct ruin that of the wall of circumvallation ; they
are to put down internal revolt ; they are to crush ail
insurrectionary movements ; they are military engines
impregnable to popular force—no matter what it is
that the people aim at—whether the object be
anarchical, or in support of constitutional freedom.
Whatever sense or colour the Ministers of the French
Crown deem it right and lawful, in their exercise of
the king's prerogative, to assign to active movements
undertaken by the populace, or by unauthorized
citizens, no matter of what class in society, !or
obstructing the application of the executive poeer,
whether legitimate or despotic, the detached for-
tresses are well calculated to sustain. Whatever the
military commandant of Paris orders, in defiance
and forcible opposition, whether to rabble impulse or
:o public opinion, that the •• detached works" arc
destined to give him the means of executing, in spite
of public opinion. If the am ybe with the Crown, this
Crown henceforth will enjoy absolute sway over the
people. Bonaparte at one time meditated and under-
ook a measure of this description as a resistless aux-
iliary to military despotism ; but that deliberate tyrant
was cut short before he could accomplish his project.
What would the people of England say to twenty
tieases bristeieg with cannon, and planted so as at the
word of a commanding officer to bombard London cud
reduce it to a mess of ruins ? We know that the first
hint of such a plot would raise the nation like a single
man. However, if' it be the crotchet of our French
ceighbou rs to treat " gory" (that is, hatchery) as a
eubstance, and civil liberty as a shadow, it needs no
ghost to tell us how the matter will end, They will
gain the prize of military despotism for themselves
they wilt tail in the attempt to force it upon their con-
;mental neighbours. But we mutt not be impertinent.
It is " no main of ours."
(Front the Morning Herald.)
A Correspondent, who writes from Newcastle-on-
Tyue, directs our attention to the circumstance that
the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway Company has
purchased a number of locomotive engines made in the
United States. Upon this tact, our Correspondent rca-
eons in the following strain
We have hitherto retained cur prc-eminence in ma-
nufactures by means of the superiority of our machinery.
"that supeeiwity has ceabled us to compete wi'.ll foreigin•rs,
notwithstanding the low price of labour on the Contmenr."
Our Correspondent, then, expresses a hope that this
competition on the part of the United States may I. ad
to some decided improemnents in the construction of
locomotive engines, as well as in the mode of me-
caging them—the recent railway accidents being, in
the writer's judgment, " a disgrace to the mechanical
of the age." We agree cordially with our Corre-
spornient in desiring the removal of that ignorance, or
rashness, in which so many of the recent accidents on
railroads have taken their rise. This other points at
which he has glanced, may, perhaps, give rise to diver-
sity of opinion. Our Correspondent lays it down (and
truly), that our pre-eminence as a manufacturing nation
has been made to depend on the superiority of tur
machinery ; and our Correspondent is, in all probabi-
lity, one of those who desire most anxiously to wit-
ness an extension of that system of manufactures to
which Englishmen have, of late, been encouraged to
trust, as to the abiding source of the national great-
ness. 'lle first observation, in reference to the later
position, which suggests itself, is, that a manufactur-
ing system conducted on modern principles, is not only
a very narrow, but a very insecure basis on which to
rest the prosperity of a great people. When other
nations can afford to undersell us, our manufacturirg
supremacy must disappear ; and the engineers of the
United States can, it should seem, afford to undersell the
British manufacturer of railway engines in British
markets. So unstable is all foreign trade—so fleeting is
the industrial prosperity which is not permanently con-
nected with the supply of the home and the colonial
markets ! Yet to the extension of our foreign trade,
all the efforts of our modern law-makers would appear
to be devoted. Many of our political economists,
moreover, boldly proclaim foreign trade to be the
chief—if not the sole—source of national wealth !
The reode of thinking which these doctrines gre-.
dually induce, in large classes of men, is curiou-,
Our Correspondent furnishes an illustration of this truth
when he observes, that " our superiority in machinery
has enabled us to compete with foreigners, notwith-
standing the low price of labour on the Continent."
In this sentence, it will be noted, that a " low price of
labour" is assumed to be a great national advantage !
Yes ; " cheapness," which is the great object aimed at
by free-traders, and by fashionable political economists,
means nothing else than " a low price of labour ; and
yet these very economists, who loag to witness
the establishment of the lowest possible prices for
labour, and for all its products, rest the whole
of their reasonings on the doctrine, that " labour is
the source of all wealth." Most truly, indeed, may
labour be pronounced to be the source of wealth ; but
assuredly, the obvious and the natural mode of aug-
menting a nation's wealth, is to increase, not to dimi-
nish, the value of its labour ! It may be, as our Cor-
respondent suggests, a distressing thing, that the engi-
neers of the United States should undersell our own
engineers in our own markets ; but it may be doubted
whether the true use to be made of this proof of the
slippery nature of a foreign trade that depends on me-
chanical suPerl"itY, be not, to regard all foreign trade
as, in its essence, subordinate to our home and our
Colonial trades—and to regard, at the same time, the
protection of all native proeucers as amongst the most
sacred duties of our Government !

FROM TIE EVININ6 PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Globe.)
Men of England, ye are slaves,
s, and the Herald
Beaten by policemen's staves"
"to yield eSxinhgosrtsonteheofpetohpele CofhaErtongtleopdoeotot
with-
out a struggle to the handcuffs and fetters of a cont:-