The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-21 00:00:00

actuelles, did not interfere with his having actually
bargained for Nice and Savoy, and his actually
seising them by a ludicrous sham suffrage. We

are not now raking up accusations, we are simply
weighing in the politician's balance the business
done at Baden-Baden, and we affirm that so far as
related to
.the giving soothing assurances to Ger-
many, it must be wholly nugatory. If on the other
hand, in the short hour said to have been conceded

,o the EMPEROR by the KING, anything was dis.

cussed parallel with the long-standing secret en-
gagement with Sardinia in regale to " natural
boundaries" on the Alps, that was real business, and

many parties may find it out to have been so in due
time. No one, however, can tell whether the un-
enthusiastic REGENT may not have spent his share
of the time in showing more or less plainly, that

Europe could not make any further approach to,

wards the Map Imperial for 1860.
But what means the devoting of fifteen sections
of the twenty of M. ABOUT'S pamphlet to the praise,
the instruction, and the warning of Prussia. Why
is it so elaborately proved that Austria ought not
to lead, and cannot lead Germany ; that Prussia
can unite and lead her, but that Prussia has acted
very unworthily of her opportunities, and must
mend her ways ? Why are the villanous intrigues
of the Prussian police with a London democratic
committee discussed at such length ? And why are
such pains taken to show that Prussia ought to
aim at uniting all Germany in constitutional Go-
vernment, and at obtaining a universal suffrage of
the people, conferring the Crown on the King of
PRUSSIA.

There can hardly be a doubt of the drift of all
' this. It represents LOUIS NAPOLEON to all the
peoples of Germany as the patron of their liberties
against their present rulers. The EMPEROR well
knows, he saw it, indeed, plainly enough in Italy,
that peoples will rise only for, at least, constitutional
liberty. If he can create a ferment which shall
render it desirable, almost necessary, as in Italy,
for a native King to accept the offered crown of
the self-liberated States, then he may, as he did in
Italy, disregard the mis-colouring of the Map for
1860, so far as the natural boundaries of France
are concerned ; he may turn to a German King and
Parliament across the Rhine, and say, as he did to
those across the Alps,—" Under the auspices of
France you entered on the path of Independence
and Liberty ! " How will they be able to resist
the appal—like Piedmont, they may be reluctant,
but i'An aggrandised monarch, and his liberated
- people, will feel compelled to vote for France, by
. acclamation, " the left bank of the hine."

Mr. CARLYLE once dubbed Mr. COBDEN-1

"The

Political Bagman." And a melancholy justification
of this ironical soubrzquet is certainly being afforded
at this moment by his anomalous position at Paris
as a sort of a supplementary semi-official, un-
titled, half-recognised mercantile plenipotentiary.
It is a wretched spectacle altogether—this hag-
gling over the sous and centimes in a back street
of the French capital—this thrifty, parsimonious,
flint-skinning process of looking after the half-

pence now that we have let not merely the pounds
but the millions sterling look after themselves.
Here is England fresh from the folly of giving up
everything, of emptying her purse, as it were, to
the whole world—now endeavouring to wring from
France (in the name of the French alliance, for-
sooth !) some trumpery reciprocation of advantages
by way of compensation ! Nothing of the kind is
attempted to be done in regard to other foreign
Powers—such as Spain and Portugal. To the vine
growers of the Iberian peninsula we: have thrown
open our porta as frankly as we have done to the
claret manufacturers of the south of France. Yet
it is to the French Government alone that we are
now making these urgent: advances, through our
extra-ordinary and undecorated diplomatist the
member for Rochdale, by way, of course (indeed
avowedly), of improving our friendly relations with
our immediate neighbours. Seeing that no similar
demands whatever for anything like a reciprocation
of these advantages are being made just now for
example, upon Spain or Portugal—our Imperial ally,
with a vivid appreciation of these distinguishing
favours on our part, might certainly be disposed
to ejaculate "Save me from my friends."
The reflection cannot but force itself upon one so
astute as the reigning EMPEROR that France in
this matter is expected to pay thus in small coin for
the mere hollow pretense of this alliance.
How " hollow " it is felt to be on both sides
of the Channel we may recognise clearly through
more than one glaring indication. Yonder, not
merely in the fact of NAPOLEON keeping up in a
time of peace, an army of from 600,000 to 700,000
men—but more particularly from his continual
augmentation of a gigantic steam fleet, altogether
disproportioned to the coast defences or the colonial
requirements of the French Empire, and in fact
only serviceable upon the contingency of a war
with the greatest maritime power in the world!
Here—the tokens of this profound sense of the in-
security of the Anglo-French alliance, in the esti-
mation of all intelligent Englishmen, are visible in
characters so legible that " he who runs may read."
They are recognisable in the very numerals making
up the aggregate of the vast sums recorded in the
Budget of our Chancellor ;of the Exchequer—
£ls,ooo,ooo for our maritime armaments,
£15,000,000 for our military armaments, altogether
£30,000,000 in a year of peace for the support of
our war establishments—actually close upon one
entire moiety of our monstrous annual expenditure
of £70,000,000 ! The same consciousness of the
hollowness of this vaunted French alliance has
summoned together under the banners of the Crown
—has spontaneously called together in the name of
the QUEEN and of the country 100,000 armed
civilians—those loyal and patriotic bands of Rifle
Volunteers, a considerable proportion of whose
aggregate number will on Saturday next be
reviewed in Hy de Park by the SOVE-
REIGN.

Yet further—it is this now almost
universal feeling as to the necessity of the
alliance that is about to supplement the demand
upon the year of £30,000,000 for the maintenance
significant
aneinfiacncet
of our sea and land forces, by a more
demand still for £11,850,000, or at the very least
for £8,000,000 or £10,000,000, for the rapid de-
velopment and completion of our system of coast
fortifications. And it is while we are yet in the
midst of this warlike solicitude, and of what (but for
the object held in view) we might almost designate,
with some degree of truth, this profligate expendi•
ture—it is at this most inopportune moment,
when we have just swept away the last barriers
at our ports, that we have Mr. COBDEN yonder
haggling over the halfpence in Paris ; trying in a
manner not the most dignified in the world to
extort from the reluctant authorities in France
some small, almost infinitessimal, return to us in
the name of Free Trade !—in the name of Free
Trade!—but really in the interests of that anti-
thesis to Free Trade, the old world cause of Recip-
rocity ! The late Sir ROBERT PEEL nobly proffere.i
his tribute of praise to the great Free Trader, when
attributing the main part of the success of
the then recent agitation ,for Free Trade to
Mr. COBDEN'S " unadorned eloquence." The
member for Birmingham must needs travesty
the expression not long since, when expatiating
with a somewhat precipitate enthusiasm upon the
new successes achieved by Mr. COBDEN, in his later