The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE DAILT PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Globe.)
We should think it an injustice to our English Contem-
poraries, whose moderation of tone (speaking generally).
on the Eastern question has been conspicuous, if we omitted
to give a specimen of the sort of pegs to hang a quarrel on,
which the Paris journalists of the (expiring) war party are
capable of resorting to. The example which we shall cite
will show that when folks are resolved on taking offence,
they will find matter fer it even in overtures of concilia-
tion. An article of last week in our Morning Contem-
porary, the Chronicle, which the Examiner of Sunday
gave in extenso, as a peace offering to France, and a testi-
mony of the friendly feelings entertained in England
towards our nearest neighbours, is translated, almost
equally at length, by the Paris paper the Commerce, as
an evidence of insulting disdain and derision—an insup-
portable persiflage. What is remarkable is, that the
Commerce quotes (what it does quote) correctly enough,
and finds " insupportable persiflage" in the following calm
expression of sentiments, which, if sincere, are exactly
what they ought to be mutually between two
great nations. We are unable to discover where
the persiflage lies. Those Frenchmen who think it im
possible that friendly feelings towards France should exist
in England must find the impossibility in their own hearts,
which they impute to ours. The veteran leader, who
met our countrymen so often in battle—Marshal Soult
—feels no such hostile emotions towards English friend-
ship. He leaves such emotions to schoolboy statesmen,
like M. Jaubert, and mischief-making journalists, like M.
Mauguin. We may have a word or two more to say
about these latter persons ; but we begin by extracting
the " insupportable persiflage" from the Chronicle
" We trust that the dangerous principle of seeking
national advantages, not in the development of internal
industry and foreign commerce, but in apoliations and
extensions of frontiers by conquests, will be more and
more reprobated, and that France will become sensible
that she is more especially called on to perform the
high and elevated part of guardian of the peace of Eu-
rope, and that her influence can only be impaired by
pursuing objects calculated to inspire her neighbours
with jealousy and alarm. We have always maintained,
and we are sure, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the
people of England, so far from wishing to impair the le-
gitimate influence of France, or to curtail her power, feel
a deep interest in her welfare ; and were she even wan-
tonly to provoke an European war, in which fortune might
not favour her, would grieve to see any of her neigh-
bours aggrandised at her expense. The statesmen of
France must know that when, at the Congress of
Vienna a strenuous attempt was made to wrest
Al,: ace and Lorraine from France and re-unite
them to Germany, from which they had been detached
long before the French Revelution, the representative of
Eagland at the Congress gave great offence by the
obstinacy with which he opposed the attempt, as
one pregnant with danger to Europe. The feeling
which then animated the representative of Eng-
land still exists. We wish France to remain strong
and influential. She is necessary as a Power of the
first rank to the stability of the European common-
wealth. Jealous of France we cannot be, for we aspire
not to be a military Power of the first rank; and we know
that the means of France will not allow her to rival us
on our own element—the ocean ; and even if she pos-
sessed a commercial navy with adequate means, it would
he impossible for her to hold the first rank as a military
Power, and at the same time maintain fleets capable of
making head against our own. The English wish well to
France ; and it can only be by the grea'est mismanage-
ment, by the grossest misconception of the part she is
called on to fill in Europe, that England and France can
pcssibly come into collison. Nature, by assigning them
t•Ao daerent elements, as it were, on which to ditTlay Cieir
respective powers, has removed the great cause of jea-
lousy, and destined dim for friendly intercernmunion."
The above views, which are precisely our own, and which
ore denounced as an " insupportable persiflage," receive
singular confirmation from the financial discussions in the
several bureaux or standing Committees of the Chamber,
reported in the Paris papers of Sunday. Indeed, those
views are precisely M. 'fillers' himself, just before he ob-
tained rower, and stated his opinion deliberately, that the
re. :in power and interests of France were continental, not
maritime. In effect, the Finance Minister's statement of
t!,e credits that will be necessary, even on the supposition
that the armaments be not increased, is quite sufficient to
show the ruin of all pacific and internal interests that must
follow from the attempt to surpass all other Powers both
by land and sea.