The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-29 00:00:00

TILE FRENCH TREATY.

It is not a bargain. 'The French Treaty is not a
bargain. We have admitted this over and over
again. But it bears the outward and visible sem-
blance of a bargain. If a highwayman should meet
a peaceable citizen in a dark lane and should invite
him to change coats and watches with him and the
citizen surrendered his property and declined the
exchange, it would not be a bargain ; or, if an old
woman should beg you, for the love of Heaven, to
buy a pennyworth of nuts of her, and you gave
her the penny and refused the nuts, it would not
be a bargain ' • but there would be the considera-
tion of a whole skin in the one case and of a
charitable act in the other. There is, however, no
consideration of fear or of charity in our dealings
with our very affluent and courteous friends on the
other side of the Channel. What, then, is the reason
that we are ostentatiously indifferent as to any
equivalent ? Why do we surrender our coat and
watch without even looking at the fustian jacket
offered in exchange ? Why do we pay our penny
and disdain to hold out our hands for the nuts ?
We are a very rich nation and a very grand nation,
and we have a history interlaced with glorious
traditions, and a rule which extends as far as there
is land or water for the sun to shine upon; but •
that is no reason why we should give ourselves
such tremendously weak Grand Seigneur airs in
dealings with our friends the French. They are
not a nation of paupers. We are not tossing them
a dole. They come to us with an offer to deal on
equal terms. M. Thouvenel takes care to tell us
that " gratitude and sentiment are not the basis
of the relations of States." In the cases we put;
when you give the highwayman your coat and
watch there is an implied agreement that he will
allow you to go quietly on your way home; when you
give the old woman the penny she is bound to
follow you with blessings. But France does not
promise to cease her aggressions. or to render you
a good word for all that you give her by this Com-
mercial Treaty. She invites you to make your
own bargain, and if shesgets the best of it she
laughs at you for a blockhead.
"To-night the sealing of this "merry bond"' is
to be proceeded with. The papermakers are to be
offered up as a sacrifice to that entente cordinle
which proceeds so pleasantly. Now, there is, as
we have already intimated, no interest in this coun-
try with which we have lass community of pecuniary
interest than the papermakers. To us the one great
virtue of the reduction of the paper duties is that
it shall give us cheap paper. When the duties
cease we have promised to give the public the bene-
fit of the change, and if the price of paper should
not fall when the duty is removed we shall be most
obviously losers by the alteration. To us cheap
paper is to be desired—cheap paper made of rags.
We cannot use paper made of straw. We must
have such paper as the public expect at our hands.
It is clearly, therefore, our interest to throw over
every consideration of English or foreign produe-
duction ; and, if we can only see our way clear to
get a lasting supply of cheaper paper from abroad
than we can get at home, to advocate the course of
legislation by which that supply can be procured.
We think, however, that we may appeal to the
public to recognise the fact that it has never been
our custom to intrude our mercantile interests into
the discussions in which it is our duty to take
part ; nor in tsking our line upon this question
0)
t the papermakers have we for a moment con-
sidered how it would affect ourselves. It seems to
us that a great injustice is about to be' done to
a class of traders, and that this injustice is not
only uncalled for by any public interests or
true principles, but that it is volun-
tarily commercialy inflicted
in
the
mere officiouSness of subser-
viency, or in the merely pedantic affection for the
integrity of a particular scheme. We are told that
the sacrifice must be at once consummated. It is
premature to object to it, because we do not vet
know what great good the Emperor of the French
has in store for us. We must begin by shutting
our eyes before we open our mouths to take in that
rich moreettit which the Emperor holds between his
finger and thumb. Surely we have had enough of
this nonsense ? With recent examples before them,
the House of Commons will scarcely listen pa-
tiently to the Chancellor of the Exchequer exhort-
ing them to give up all security against being
tricked, and to trust to the magnanimity of the
Emperor of the French. Again, we are told, that
we already import a great many rags from
Zoilve-
rein, in spite of a high export duty. So
we do.
We pay so high a price for our paper here that we
can afford to buy the German rags, even with a
burden of £lO or £l2 per ton upon them. But,
when the Germans can send us their paper free,
does any sane man suppose that they will send us
rags burdened with an export duty ? Strong ex-
periments are made upon the House of Commons
,just now, but we can scarcely believe that it will
be called upon to give effect to argumerts such as
these.

We have been unable to resist the appeal of the
papermalcers, because it seems to unto unite in its
favour every consideration which generally in-
fluences men in makin,,. bargains. In the first
place, we do not like to be so manifestly
and openly " done." It is wounding to our amour
propre and to our mercantile instincts. It is an
exception in favour of France to the whole system
of our legislation with respect to other countries,
for, whereas we always put on an import duty
wheie we have an Excise duty, here we keep up
an Excise duty and take off the import duty. A

thousand mouths will be here opened to tell us that
the Excise duty is taken off. Stop a bit. The
Excise duty is not taken off; the only difference is
that it is levied on the other side of the water, that
it goes into the French and not into the English
Exchequer, and that it is levied upon the raw mate-
rial, and not upon the manufactured article. Duty
free paper and export-duty-paying rags means a
bounty upon the export of French paper paid by
the English consumer to the French Treasury. Dis-
guise it in what inricacies of speech Mr. Gladstone
may, his proposition is to pay a 25 per cent. bounty
to the French Governthent upon the import of
French paper, and to make our papermakers 'or our
consumers pay this money. It is as plain as thought
can present itself that this must be so. You dam
up the raw material by an export duty of 50 per
cent. ; you let the manufactured article flow in free.
What must be the operation of this upon the Eng-
lishman who exists by buying the raw material
and selling the manufactured article ? Can it be
other than what we have stated ?
This is the case of the papermakers. We do
not want to overstate it ; and, advocating as we
are an interest which is not oar own, we do
not want to understate it. We shall be very
glad to be convinced that there is nothing at all
in it. A bounty for cheap paper cannot but have
a pleasant sound to us, whose largest expenditureis
beyond all comparison in this particular substance.
We do not pretend to endorse all that has been
said by the papermakers as to the total destruction
of their trade; but we think they are about to be
most unfairly weighted in the race they will have
to run, and we are not disposed to rely more en-
tirely than we can help upon a foreign supply, when
we see every reason to believe that an English
supply would be more certain, and even more cheap,
if the weights were kept even, or, rather if there
were no weights at all upon either competitor. If
we are wrong we should be the greatest losers by
our error in judgment. But we cannot think we
are wrong in trying to preserve ourselves and other
paper consumers from paying a large tax upon rags
to the French Government. Mr. Gladstone says,
" Trust to the Emperor;" we say to the House of
Commons " Trust only to yourselves." Our advice
is to adjourn this question till after Easter, and to
negotiate in the meantime. Observe what we have
to give. We have the largest paper-market in the
world to offer to a people who already produce very
good paper, and who have an immense gathering-
ground for rags. Surely we are in a position to ask
something in return for this—if Mr. Gladstone is
not too proud to ask, or too much enamoured with
that faultless creation of his to submit to have a de-
Feet removed.