The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-01 00:00:00

THE COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH
FRANCE.

The principle of competition has recently received
a development of which Adam Smith and his fol-
lowers little dreamt. Certainly, when they wrote of
the necessity of opening trade, both internal and
external, and of sweeping away all obstacles to the
free practice of any profession, they proposed inno-
vations which must have appeared to the people of
that day sufficiently bold and startling. But now,
that we have achieved all this, we seem likely to go
a step further, and to give this new and fruitful
principle a development which may tend rather to
expose it to ridicule than to increase the public
confidence in its truth. We have already applied
competition to the administration of justice by set-
ting up the County Courts as rivals to the superior
tribunals, and hitherto the experiment has been
attended with complete success. Because we have
gone to such vast expense in establishing our regu-
lar army, we have felt it necessary to start a sort of
opposition to it by raising an irregular army of
150,000 Volunteers. The press is often accused of
competing with the House of Commons in the dis-
cussion of public affairs. The Dissenters all over
the country are in active competition with the Esta-
blished Church. The miscarriages of the Crimea
led to a general impression that everything would
be better managed by private persons than by the
Government, and the theory has been carried out
not only by giving to individual enterprise what-
ever can be taken out of the hands of Government,
but by intrusting to private persons the very func-
tions and duties for the discharge of which some
one else is paid.
If we go on at this rate we shall end in a
thoroughly Japanese system, where all things are
ethveerd;
mubilneisotfere,aecvheortyhfctieurn, where every every department,
will have its un-
official antitype, and be doomed to struggle not only
with the cares of office, but with the pangs of jea-
lousy and rivalry. For our own part, we must
plainly say that, strong as was our sense of the
blundering, the failures, and the mismanagement
of the Crimea, the years that ha7e since passed by
have not tended to convince us that, bad as our
public management has been, we are likely very
mates ially to improve it by a recourse to private
enterprise as a substitute for it. Those years have
been full of discoveries of the grossest frauds perpe-
trated on private establishments. They have given
us in the ease of the Great Eastern an abstract of
every kind of mismanagement of which a great un-
dertaking is capable, and people are very much dis-
posed to doubt whether the public service -would
gain if the navy were managed after the fashion of
our great Steam-Packet Companies, or the army
subject to no better discipline than has been shown
to prevail in many of our banking establishments.
There was, however, one instance in which it was
supposed that we had, at any rate, successfully
called in the abilities of a private man to assist
the defects of our officials. Mr. Cobden was just
the man to negotiate a Commercial Treaty with
France. The idea was his own, and who so fit to
work out the scheme as the great Apostle of Free
Trade ? Compared with such a man, what could
Lord Cowley, what could all the English Embassy
at Paris, know ? They were for this particular .
subject set aside, and the destinies of the country,
so far as the commertial treaty went, were placed.
at the disposal of Mr. Cobden. We have not yet
seen the end of this mission, but we know enough
to say with the most perfect confidence that it was
impossible to place the negotiation of a treaty in
worse hands. As regards form, there probably
never was an instrument prepared which offended
so grievously against the rules according to which
alone contracts can be reduced into a clear and
perspicuous shape. The questions which arise on a
document not at all difficult to frame, and contain-
ing no special or uncommon conditions, are almost
infinite, principally because the phraseology differs
iu almost every clause, and the same word is never
used a second time to express the same idea if a
synonym, however clumsy end inaccurate, can be
found. As to the substance, the error was still
more grievous. Mr. Cobden should have been con-
sistent. If he adhered to the ordinary doctrines of
Free Trade, he should have had nothing to do with
commercial treaties at all. If he determined to
negotiate a commercial treaty, he should have ne-
gotiated it on the principles upon which alone such
things rest—the principles of reciprocity. As a
Free Trader, lie should have advised the reduction
of our duties on imports to the lowest point our
revenue would permit. As a negotiator, he should
have stickled about any reduction at all, and only
made it in consideration of a corresponding reduc-
tion on the part of France. Instead of this Mr.
Cobden gave up all our customs' duties because he
was a Free Trader, and failed in obtaining corres-
ponding concessions from France because he had left
himself no equivalent to offer. Decidedly the ex-
periment of an amateur negotiator did not in this
instance answer ; and the veriest official hack, while
be might have done much better, could not pos-
sibly have done worse. But we are told that the
experiment is to be tried again. A paragraph is
going the round of the newspapers which asserts
that Mr. Lindsay, the member for Sunderland, is to
be despatched on a mission to the United States in
order to negotiate our admission into the American
coasting trade, to settle the rule which is to be ob-
served in the next naval war, and to settle the law
of the two countries with regard to collisions at sea.
We do not believe that this report is true, and
we heartily hope it is not—so heartily that we can-
not forbear from protesting against the idea of such
a mission. We have a Minister in the United States
presumedly competent to represent us there ; if not,
it is easy to recall him and supply his place by some
person who is fit for it. We ought not to fall into
the practice of setting one man to do another man's
work. But, even waivng this objection, we hope
that some person more fitted to represent this coun-
try in the United States than Mr. Lindsay will be
selected. Mr. Lindsay is a self-made and self-edn-
cated man ; that is to his honour, but has no tend-
ency to instill into him those qualities which are
principally needed in diplomatic intercourse. We
should be sorry that the gentleman to whom the
task of representing the interests of England is in-
trusted should not speak with more influence than-
Mr. Lindsay can possibly carry with him. ,W,e'
have, as we have shown, no reason to congratm,f!'
ourselves that we have placed Mr. Cobden in the
position of our representative at the Court of
bound ich
France; but, whatever are the groands
re to
we complain of Mr, Cobden, we
ha .
ane and m all
admit that he occupies, both in . .
hica it would be
foreign countries, a position to. vr_
Lindsay to
simply ridiculous for Mr- pretend.
resented b
We entirely decline to ~
bbeenreevie that y such a
negotiator, nor do we, the subjects
on which negotiation.. desired admit of any
satisfactory settlemez!van "he Protectio t mafeeling
is strong in the Arneriel s. and they are not likely,
admitted as they are a ready to the coasting trade
of this country, to surrender the advantage which
from their narrow
by
point of view, they think they obtained, y excluding us from the trade be-
tween the Atlantic cities and California. We en-
tirely protest against
the notion that persons whom
nobody would think fit to place in office at home
are competent to represent the country
abroad, and
we anticipate nothing but evil should the policy be-
come established of taking the business of the coun-
try out of the hands of our responsible Ministers at
foreign courts and placing it in the hands of no-
vices, who purchase, by serving us for nothing, fA
most unlimited licence of mismanagement.--Tines:.