The Sun.
London, England, 1840-11-11 00:00:00

'From the Courier.)

Elsewhere will be found the copy Of a despatch from
Lord Palmerston to Earl Granville at Paris, dated
November 2, and professing to be in answer to one of
M. Thiers, communicated to his Lordship by M.
Guizot on the 10th of October, or nearly a month pre-
viously. We are indebted for this document to the
Foreign Office itself through the Morning Chronicle
this time, to which it has been circuitously transmitted
through Paris, as on a former occasion his Lord-
ship's Memorandum was published to the world through
the medium of a Brussels Paper. A careful perusal
of this State Paper does not certainly justify the ex-
pectations which might be raised from the uncom-
mon length of time consumed in its gestation.
We have no hesitation, on the contrary, in denouncing
it as for the most part a piece of very contemptible
casuistry—of special pleading indeed, not transparent
only, but replete with puerile absurdities which will im-
pose upon nobody, either on this or the other side of the
water. That we do not pronounce this condemnation
in the absence of cause, we will cite one or two
passages more prominently in evidence of it. Thus, after
two paragraphs of empty compliment and reference to
dates, Lord Palmerston proceeds with the followiug
statement M. Thiers says that France, in accept-
ing with a religious fidelity the state of Europe, such
as it resulted from treaties (by which it is presumed are
meant the treaties of 1815) has understood that the
state should not be changed, either for the benefit or to
the detriment of any existing Power. In this under-
standing her Majesty's Government entirely agrees ;
and her Majesty's Government conceives that an ar-
rangement which has for its object to prevent Egypt
and Syria from being severed from the Turkish empire
is in strict conformity with this understanding, and in
accordance both with its letter and with its spirit."
Here we have the silly affectation of misunderstanding
the plain sense of the note of M. Thiers, and of pro-
ceeding to reason upon the wilful perversion as if the
premises assumed were of admitted correctness.
(From the Standard.)

We cannot but believe that much of the success
which has attended the recent noble efforts of the
King of the French to save Europe from the curse
of a general war, is owing to the dignified and for-
bearing spirit which has been displayed almost with-
out an exception, during the last few months, by the
newspaper press of Great Britain. Notwithstanding
the violent and insulting menaces and denunciations
indulged in by the Thiers press whenever it found
occasion to refer to England, British journals of
all parties refrained from replying in the style
which its insolence was calculated to provoke ; wisely
agreeing that abettors of such writers were only
to be found among the vilest and most depraved
classes of the French people, and that it was neither just
nor politic to visit the ill-mannered abuse and lying gas-
conade of such canaille on a nation with which we had
been so long on terms of amity and good feeling. It is
only the man whose courage is beyond suspicion that
can afford to display a greater degree of forbearance in
resenting an injury than his neighbours. Beside,
Englishmen are well aware that big words and
empty boasting are not the concomitants of dig-
nity and courage, and they accordingly refrained
from reciprocating them. They went even beyond this
exhibition of good taste. Looking upon the influence
exercised by M. Thiers over the Parisian Press, they
ascribed to him, and to him solely, the wild and
frantic Anglophobia with which the French Press
had been innoculated, and treated it as a disease
which, if its rabidness were not exaggerated by pra-
vocation, would in due time cure itself. Had they
adopted the natural and more obvious course of repelling
insult by insult, the difficulties reserved for the
King of the French and his prasent Cabinet would
have been enormously increased. The forbear-
ance which has been displayed throughout this
contest by the British Press has left nothing
to retract, now that the result must have satisfied it
how small a portion of the respectable classes in France
participated in that violent abuse of England which
formed for three months the staple topic of a large
portion of the French journals.