The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-07 00:00:00

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Any. defence of so important a department of
the liberty of the [press as the right to criticise
foreign Governments is happily a work of super-
erogation, Liberty of thought and speech is the
very air which an Englishman breathes from his
birth ; he could not understand living in another
atmosphere. Nor when you once allow this liberty
can you restrict the range of its subjects. The.
principle must have free exercise, or it dies. There
is no medium. It would be fatal to say, " Discuss
home matters, but not foreign ones." A press
so confined would lack the inspiration of that,
universal sympathy which is necessary to sustain
its spirit. Every issue of an English journal speaks
to the whole world ; that is its strength ; it lives by
its universality ; that idea imparts conscious power,
elevates the tone and braces the will of this great
impersonality, invigorates the statement, points
the epithet, and nails the argument, It could not
speak with half the power it does on domestic sub-
jects if it could not speak of foreign ; it could not
fly with its wings clipped; it would not be the
i whole which it s ; it would cease to be an epitome
of the world : its voice would grow fainter and
fainter, and this life under an interdict would not
be worth having.
We need not say that the Montalembert trial
and the protests which it has raised from the Eng-
lish press in part suggest these remarks: But we
are also reminded of this subject by the recent
news from Belgium. Whoever doubts the great
importance of foreign criticism as an element in the
press and an integral part of its very life should
take warning by the fate of the Belgian press.
This crippled state which we have been just de-
scribing has been, in fact, the state of the Belgian
press ever since the Conference of Paris. The fierce
reclamations of the French Government, in which
that Conference basely acquiesced, frightened the
Belgian press into complete silence. upon French
affairs. It has been for more than two years warned
off a particular port ion,and that from circumstances
a most critical portion, of European ground ' • and
now see the result. A press shackled in its subject
matter is, as a next step, loaded with penalties.
It has ceased to be a foreign critic ;. it is now no
longer an efficient home one. The aws upon the
press are to be sharpened, there is to be a two years'
additional impriscninent for offences of the press,
and, what Belgium has not known before, a stirred-
lance of police is to follow. 'What is the reason
for all this ? Has the Belgian press shown a
revolutionary spirit ? Quite the contrary. No
press trial of any importance has occurred for a
long time. The reason simply is, that it is a
crippled press, that a crippled press cannot defend
itself, and that what cannot defend itself is sure to
suffer. A confined press, shut out from European
events, is a lifeless, soulless press,—a press which
nobody cares for ; it is ripe for suppression.
We call attention the more readily to this sub-
ject because we are aware that there are circles in
this country to which the news of anything befall-
ing the press is very far from being wholly pain-
ful news. It is utterly impossible to prevent side-
currents of reaction in a country. One would have
imagined that the mighty watchword of " the
Liberty of the Press" would have disarmed, at
least in this country, not only speech but thought;
that disaffection to it would be unknown ; but no
great popular institution will ever exist without
opposition in some quarters, and the more esta-
blished, it is the more criticism it will provoke.
There are minds of a critical, fastidious type, that
are almost sure to take exception to any esta-
blished order of things in which they live,
especially if it brings out the roughnesses and
crudities of the human material at all prominently-.
A free press, it is admitted,'does this pre-eminently
—it is the effect of it as a whole which constitutes
its triumph ' • the actual working of it is full of jars
and discords ; a great many toes are trodden on ;
people have to hear things said about them. which
they by no means like ; and your fine gentleman
is often a good deal ruffled, and says to his finer
inner self "Really, really, this is very unpleasant."
Our Parliament is another rough institution which
breeds considerable awkwardness and collisions.
When these gentlemen get together they form
small spheres of more or less reactionary thought.
It becomes fashionable and a mark of esoteric pro-
gress to criticise popular institutions ; " they are
coarse, vulgar, unmanageable ; they produce an
enormous waste of time and temper, wheel clashes
with wheel, scheme fights scheme, there is too
much talking and shouting-7-great cry and little
wool." An effective foreign despotism presents
itself in • anything but a disagreeable aspect
to minds thus warped by over-criticism. These
are the evils with which they are brought into
contact ; they easily bring themselves to feel a kind
of spite at patriotic watchwords ; they are provoked
at finding the main current so. dead against them ;
the more everybody else likes these institutions the
more they are resolved to be cold and fastidious
about them ; theyhate a crowd ; they like smooth
ways. A well-administered foreign despotism, then,
that avoided blunders, did everything quietly and
snugly, and could appeal to louvres and Cher-
bourgs restored without a single public meeting or
one debate, would have considerable charm for
these minds ;it would, in fact, be their beau ideal. '
So long as there are different types of mina in
the world, so long it will be impossible to prevent
these fastidious, splenetic side-currents of reaction,
in such a country as ours. It is the very tendency
of everything established, whatever it may be, to
provoke contradiction ; you cannot prove ever so
known a truth but the very circumstance that others
believe it will be the great charm and the motive
to some for disbelieving it. Then, when a small
circle is formed, the sympathy of secret brother-
hood arises, the feeling that you are right and all
the world is wrong. This spirit of contradiction
will attack established popular institutions, just
as it will attack common maxims and received
principles in all departments. The mistake is
when persons who find their way accidentally
into these sets think that there is a real, bona fide,
reaction in the intellect of the country . There
is nothing of the sort. These side-protests are -
part of the law of established truth ; t'iey attend
the development of right principles as certainly as
the shadow attends upon the light. The main
national current of thought goes steadily on, the
institutions continue to develop upon their own
basis, the liberty of the press is as strong as ever,
representative government is as strong as ever,
everything national, is as strong as ever, and these
secret protests and. recalcitrations only show the
firmness of the basis on which all these institu-
tions rest; but they should be at the same time
mementoes to us not to lose sight of the defence of
them.—Times.

THE ANNUAL STATEMENT OF TRADE.

The Board of Trade has just issued the state-
ment of Trade and Navigation for the 'year 1857,
and although its general results have been :alre-ady
anticipated by the publication of the « Statistical
Abstract," yet its appearance will be very welcome
to those who desire to examine more closely into
the progress made in the several branches of flit.-
home and foreign trade of the kingdom.
There are, however, some new tables introduced
into the volume this year which render it more than
ordinarily interesting, we allude to the accounts of
trade at the principal ports in each division of the
kingdom, which possesses a local as well as a gene-
ral interest.
These new tables are full of information, and
some of the facts they bring to light will probably
astonish the greater part of our readers. Not every
one knows that the value of British produce and
manufactures exported from the port of Liverpool
alone amounts as nearly as possible to one-half of the
total exports from England and Wales, double that
from London, and to considerably more than the
entire exports from some of the European nations,.
no wonder then, that Liverpool is a great and
flourishing city ! •

_ .
But let us glance at the tables in order, and first
with regard to the import account. As Liverpool
occupies the chief position as a port of exporintion,
so London holds the first rank as a port of
impor-
tation, the greater bulk of the du ing
ty-pa)
ar-
ticles being entered there. In the year 1857
no less a sum than upwards of eleven millions ster-
ling, or exactly half of the total receipts, was re-
ceived in the port of London from custom duties.
Next to London, Liverpool takes her stand, and
then Bristol, Hull, &c., but we have no space to
refer to the several trades of each port, or to the
particular trades at particular ports, as the cotton
and silk trades at Liverpool and Southampton for
example • a brief inspection of the tables, however,
will make the whole matter clear to the most un-
lettered in statistics.
As we have stated above with reference to the
British export trade, Liverpool absorbs the greatest
shares ; then London, Hull, Newcastle, and South-
ampton. It is a curious fact that the value of the
direct exports from the whole of the Scotch
ports amount to little more than half that from the
port of Hull alone, while the whole of the direct
trade from Irish ports (little more than a quarter of
a million sterling) is less than double the amount
of the exports from Goole.
The other accounts relating to the exports of
foreign and colonial produce, and the gross receipts
of customs duties at each of the ports in the king-
dom, possess considerable interest, for all persons
convected with trade. Tho continuation of the
whole series of tables from year to year, in addition
to being most useful to merchants, will be of great
service to all companies and persons engaged in the
formation of the means of transit both by laud and
by sea,