The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-09 00:00:00

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NEIVSPAPEI%
•
vex% 14,"
443 &part-a-Joni liaVO 150 1;::1'40
• .
sagam. The natural result of such Vsoisitsotiti •"si
s 4)A .`7-
"scamped" workmanship. The Post-ofrice,-,4-'4"-';- •-•
-of welcoming any new demands upon its
-Nevi
as a national establishment ought to do, evades it;-
duties and curtails its work. Some of its proper
business it shifts on to the shoulders of its ens-
tomers ; sonic it altogether refuses. News-letters,
or newspapers, have suffered most of all. For seine
years past there has been a steady desire on the
part of the Post-office authorities to shut us out
of the letter-box. The question of the newspaper
stamp was worked by these gentlemen to the geesral
disadvantage of newspapers altogether. Evers' f
arrangement brought us some fresh disability, till
at last comes the naked proposal to deny us any
special recognition, and to treat our daily issues
just like carriers' parcels or ordinary books. Sir
Rowland. Ifill will say that we hare so grown in
bulk and circulation that we can no longer be iden-
tified as our former selves. No doubt we have, and
so has every other thing and institution in modern
England, except the Post-office. It is the very gist
of our complaint that, whereas the extensi n of
national concerns and interests has brought about
the necessary expansion of newspapers as the
natural organs of public correspondence, the Post-
! office, which should carry this correspondence, has
remained so stationary, from stint and saving, as
to be no longer equal to its duties.
Such a case as this is obviously not to be
,
disposed of by a private Cornmi:si:m. We ask,
in the name of the ita.uble 'That
fo
isr the
eParliamentaryn, inquiry into the subject,
which will satisfy the country. We wish to see it
certified in plain language and on independent
authority how far the partial expenditure of the
Post•office revenue upon the Post-office service is
sufficient for the performance of that service. We
wish to hear from unimpeachable testimony what
are the defects of the accommodation in St. Mar-
tin's-le-Grand, and what amount of reason really
attaches to the complaints of the servants. When
we have obtained this information we shall be able
to trace the imperfections of the service to their
true source. The reality of those imperfections
is matter of common and daily experience. Apart
from the treatment of newspapers, the irregularities
of the service in general are greater and more nu-
merous than they should be, as the letters in our
columns frequently show. All this we should like
to see rectified. It cannot be for the public interest
that revenue should be raised by imperfect per-
formance of public service. That is one of the
worst methods of taxation. If the Post-office re-
quires more of its income for its own purpose than
it now appropriates, it should be allowed to take
it. The deficiency in the contribution to the re-
venue, if any, would be well made up from a less
noxious source of profit; hut we are perfectly con-
vinced that in the Post-office, as in all other esta-
blishments, better service will be found ultimately
identical with greater gain.

,-."''''

TilE FRENCh TREATY.

There is a well-known— Joe Miller which occa-
sionally finds a resemblance in serious action. A
traveller at a cross-road was relieved to see a mem-
ber of the Society of Friends approaching. " This
is the way to York, isn't it ?" he asked. To which
the other replied, " Friend, first thou tellest a lie,
and then thou askest a question." This has been
the course of proceeding adopted on the so-called
commercial treaty. The treaty was concluded on
Jan. 23, in a most despotic manner, nobody even
knowing anything about it except the high contract-
ing parties • and on March 24—two months after—
the Board of Trade is sending letters to the various
Chambers of Commerce throughout the kingdom,
not only asking questions, but even suggesting
that the several chambers hall send delegates to
Paris to negotiate the very clauses of the treaty
which were supposed to have been negotiated two
months ago. For our own part, we must confess
ourselves utterly mystified. As we were never in
the secret of the treaty, so we are not aware, even
to this day, how the matter stands, and whether
there be any treaty at all, except that England has
surrendered all ehe had to give. Our sensations
are those of a garrison which has been informed
that a capitulation has been concluded on most
advantageous and honourable terms, but sees itself
let out by detachments and committed to bondage.
We want to know when the other side
of the treaty is to appear, and what it is.
We are all now such out-and-out Free-traders that
we should have been quite ready to give up every
duty we have taken off, in pure generosity, without
stipulating for a return. That would at least have
been a grand idea, and we might have shamed the
French, if shame has not departed from them, into
something like reciprocity. But wo were not per-
mitted to be generous. There must be a considera-
tion. We must be barterers and hucksters, and,
for certain State reasons, we must appear what
Napoleon called us—a nation of shopkeepers. That
indeed was a libel, and if ever on the face of the
earth there was a people that did everything across
a counter, and brought everything, human and
divine, to the measure of a franc, it is our specious
neighbour and ally. But we were to belie our real
character and to put on a disguise, for the purpose
of bringing ourselves down to the level of French
institutions and the French character. Well, we
did. We put on blouses mid beards, we cropped
our hair close, and we looked as like Frenchmen as
we could. For form's sake, and to gratify the Em-
peror and his Court, we pretended to sell what we
were giving. What we gave has now pretty well
passed out of our hands. As far as it is concerned,
we are in the case of the countryman who has sold
his horse, and lost both it and the purchaser for
an hour, still expecting the latter to return and pay.
When are we to have that handful of country notes,
however dirty and greasy ? The only imitation as
yet of the purely nominal price, which was all that
we expected from France, is a set of questions cir-
culated by our Board of Trade, intimating that if
people expect to get any concessions from France,
in return for an almost absolute surrender of all our
equivalents, they had better go to Paris and try to get
them for themselves. The treaty being thus more
than two months old, and matters being ripe for pre-
liminary inquiry,the Board of Trade wants to know
what are the articles upon which a reduction of duty
below a maximum of 30 per cent.would be specially ac-
ceptable,and whether our manufacturers would prefer
the duties to be ad valorem, or the ad valorem rate
to be assumed as the basis of specific duties, and
what have been the average price of articles for the
last six years. The answers returned by the Bir-
mingham Chamber, which we published yesterday,
do net speak favourably for the feelings of that
town on the subject. For half-manufactured articles,
such as metal sheeting and tubing, they recommend
duties to be charged by weight. Manufactured
articles, commonly included under the title of
a g
therefore value
m p b
oe
sgs
bv
leen. ,
Ad" hardware," are so various, they say, that no ave-
andaustcyaloefo3fosppeecri ficecndtu„tioers
is
specific duties at this rate, they consider fatal to all
hopes of trade with France, and they appeal to the
state of our trade with Belgium, which at a much
lower tariff takes very little of our hardware. As
for the proposal of deputies, they are of opinion
that, as the branches of trade are infinite, and
nothing will be done in France in any of them
under the treaty, such a mission would be nugatory.
The people of Birmingham, therefore, it is evident,
expect to get nothing under the treaty, but cheap
wine, brandy, and silks, for themselves and their
wives, if their trade with other countries will en-
able them to purchase such luxuries. The treaty
they consider to be more finally and irrevocably
concluded than its authors and framers supposed,
and think that the new swarm of small negotiators
invited to assist at the details would find the crumbs
left for them very few, small, and dry. Indeed, we
don't sea what other conclusion is possible. We
have done a good thing in lowering our own duties
if it turns out that we can do without them; but as
for any return of this civility from France that is a
delusion, and the sooner our manfacturers open
their eyes to the fact the better for their own
comfort at least. it is in vain to ask whether
this is the sort of treaty that Mr. Cobden i
thought he was making, because the treaty
our manufacturers find themselves asked to makes
not yet made, in the opinion of Government ;
andt
the
treaty themselves. The wonder increases why
treaty yet to be made, and done only in the general,
was not made at once and outright, by regular
dip-
lomatists, of whom England possesses and main-
and where are all these men,
tains a legion. What
that we should have had recourse to others utterly
unversed in the ways of diplomacy, and evidently
the
middle,n t a
atnoddistinguisho
fb eat we
reeeant
yt,haenbde gNivnhnoi ndgo,
not
even know a treaty when they see it? Mr. Cobden
are that thes
Supposed
himself making a treaty when he was
uefdactto i
gos toot o plain,paris
surrendering all that should have formed our side
oßrfittliisehbargain;and, no
manufacturers
re requested
and mend matters if they can. So far the profes-
sional diplo aiatists have a triumph, for Lord Cowley
probably considered himself superseded by the
arrival of an ambassador extraordinary in the great
apostle of free trade. The officials are not the only
people who exhaust their art in knowing how not
' to do a thing ; for, if the object was to give a fresh
opening to British manufactures by the increase of
a direct trade with France, that has not been done.
`When Parliament re-assembles it would be desir-
able that we should hear, on authority, what is the
state of this " Treaty," and how far France is bowie,
for the French will certainly not give us one per
cent. or one sou more than they are obliged by the
letter of their bond, and it is a new principle that
our manufacturers are to address themselves for
relief, not to their own, but to a foreign Govern-
ment.—.Timm