The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-06 00:00:00

however, of any and of every delusion of the kind.
Free Trade has taught ua better. We have learnt
a profounder wisdom than that from the beneficent
principles advanced step by step in the onward
march of civilisation, under the influence of Mas-
ters in the science of Political Economy no less
distinguished in their way than ADAM SMITH and
WILLIAM HusKissoN. How effectually the annual
motions submitted to the House of Commons by
CHARLES VILLIEES led to the development of the
great policy of Sit• ROBERT PEEL for the subversion
of the Protective :system of the monopolists, history
has already related. It is an old story, even by
this time : and yet it is one—who shall deny it ?
that is ever both profoundly interesting and
wondrously instructive to revert to. Perhaps
there is no pleasanter reading anywhere to be
found than that delightful blenching of wit and
logic sparkling luniinously over every page of
General TnoursoN's famous Corn • Law Cate-
chisms. There are certainly not discoverable,
either in BURNS or in BERANGER, any more
spirit-stirring appeals to the hopes and aspi-
rations of a great people than can be in-
stanced
by selections from the ditties
chaunted by that modern Tyrtceus of the Farm and
the Workshop, EBENEZER ELLIOTT, the Corn Law
Rhymer. For the accumulation of abundant speci-
mens of every kind of rhetorical artifice—for the
collection of the very happiest examples of oratori-
cal genius, whether pathetic, persuasive, or impas-
sioned, we could go no where more securely than to
those pages upon which have been recorded the
speeches delivered both within and without the
walls of Parliament by the leading members of the
ever-memorable Anti-Corn Law League ! Particu-
larly
will this be borne in mind, in connection with
the still vivid remembrance of the florid elocution
of JOHNSON Fox, of the resplendent rhetoric of
JOHN BRIGHT, and of those all but perfect master-
pieces of manly eloquence in whose utterance we
seemed almost to be listening to the Genius of Com-
mon Sense embodied in the person of RICHARD
COBDEN.

Although the three distinguished men last men-
tioned are still happily in their prime, have still,
let us hope, many years before them in which to
evidence anew their rare capacities and aptitude as
champions of the popular cause, and promoters of
the national interests—the enterprise with which
above all other enterprises their names have long
since come to be so very intimately associated
is as much a thing of the past as though it had
occurred in some long-vanished generation. Yet
is it, as we have said, no less interesting than instruc-
tive to revert to it upon occasion. Familiar though
that story is of the final and glorious triumph of the
great Free Trade Principles, occasions certainly
do arise at intervals, when it becomes in a manner
imperative to recall the reality of that triumph to
the recollection of the multitude at large. And
this, if for no other reason, in obedience to the
simple dictates of gratitude. Besides—there are
moments when it is wise above all things to in-
dulge for a while in these passing retrospeotions.
However often they may have been taken, it some-
times comes to pass that it is about the most
judicious course to take these same backward
glances yet once more. And the present juncture
is precisely one of these same standing-points. It
is from the 'vantage-ground of our Free Trade
policy—thanks to the labours'of SMITH, HIISKISSON,
Fox, BRIGHT, THOMPSON, VILLIERS, COBDEN, and
PEEL—that we can recognize the FOLLY and the
INFAMY of that detestable axiom with which we
set out, an axiom not so very long since actually
believed in upon both sides of the English Channel,
to wit, that the misfortunes of one country are the
opportunity of another !

France is understood, at this particular epoch in
her wonderfully chequered history, to be threatened
with a very perilous crisis of a financial character.
Her destinies are again said to be trembling in the
balance, The calamity of an insufficient
harvest has but just now come to fill up the
measure of her embarrassments—embarrassments
already formidable enough in themselves by
reason of—how many sources of a deficiency !
By reason of her extravagant armaments, both by
sea and by land, during a period of profound peace!
By reason of her prodigal, almost, one might call
it, profligate expenditure upon public works, par-
ticularly in the reconstruction of what was already
the most splendid capital of Europe, its Palladian
reconstruction, in many parts, upon a scale of
hitherto unparalleled magnificence! Because of
these and other kindred reasons the financial cup
of embarrassment held to the lips of France—a
chalice of misfortune long since filled up to the brim,
and, though honeyed upon its edge like the cup
of TAsso, containing (like that famous similitude)
many most bitter dregs within it—this financial
cup of embarrassment, we say, already brimmed up
by the reckless policy of the Lower Empire, ap-
pears to threaten now a disastrous overflow by the
perilous casualty of an inadequate harvest.
NAPOLEON will, in all human probability, recog-
nize now in this crisis in the history of his govern-
ment, supposing, that is to say, that he has not
already come to recognise it in veritable earnest,
that the only security, both political and financial,
is to be found in those great Free Trade principles
towards which he has recently been tending
under the guidance of Mr. COBDEN, along the bye-
path of reciprocity. Whatever may be in store for
our Imperial ally in his now darkening future,
France will not fail (we may rest perfectly well
assured of this) to derive a salutary lesson from
the bearing of England towards her in the midst
of her political anxieties and financial
embarrassments. She cannot, by any accident
whatever, " come what may," she cannot, we main-
tain, but recognise that it is the grand and benefi-
cent and Christian policy of Free Trade that has
scattered to the winds and scouted as only worthy
of detestation that most infamous doctrine which
proclaimed that the opportunity of England was to
be found in the misfortunes of any neighbouring
race. O'CONNELL applied the execrable dogma to
Ireland. We all remember that. But•it was in an
hour of demagogic hallucination. That odious
belief was more widely acted upon and more
flagrantly proclaimed farther back in our own his-
tory and in the history, generally speaking, of
Christendom. Free Trade Principles have—on this
side of the Channel at least—succeeded in dissipat-
ing it. It will be well for France, even at the risk
of her passing through another financial crisis, it
will be well indeed for France if she too learn the
same salutary lesson. A reciprocity treaty may
then ripen into a Free Trade Policy—the accept-
ance of which frankly and in earnest by France
would tend more certainly and securely than any-
thing else to ensure the permanent amity of the
two great arbiters of the destinies of the imman
gain,-then,
race—France and England. sever a
could any Tribune of the People dare to assert, as
a great Poet did not shrink from asserting, in 1848,
from the tribune of the National Assembly—it was
M. VICTOR HUGO who said it, that frightful un-
truth,When Paris is in agonies London
rejoicestat—“
!"

The present ministry ask the support of the
country, if we may Judge by the speeches of their
friends, much more on the merits of their foreign