The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-30 00:00:00

(1, IttninS

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST so, 1844.

The whole of France is up in arms against Eng-
land, and for what cause no Englishman can form the
slightest conception. This new passion is a wild
mania as groundless as the dreams of a lunatic. For
the last thirty years we have made no aggression on
the French, we have not interfered with them in any
way, and if England has displayed any feelings
towards its nearest neighbour they have been feelings
of peace and amity. When the worn-out BOURBONS
were extinguished, England rejoiced as much as
France, and every French journal paid the highest
compliments to a country which they now denominate
" perfidious Albion." This has all the appearance of

madness. England has done nothing to merit the
reproach. During the long period of peace England
thwarted France in only one instance, by maintaining
the integrity of the Turkish empire, an object
which the French Government declared, at a pre-
vious period, it was most anxious to accomplish.
What has France done durillg the last thirty years ?
She has seized islands in the Pacific, about which, it
is true, we care nothing, but that does not place
France in a better light. She has occupied nearly
the whole coast of Africa on the Mediterranean. She
is threatening Tunis, bombarding Tangiers and Mo-
gadore, and extending her influence from Egypt to
the utmost bounds of Morocco. By the most insi-
dious policy ESP/RTERO was driven from Spain,
Queen CHItISTINA, the favourite of the French Court,
made supreme ruler, and the whole of the Peninsula,
not even excepting our old ally, Portugal, placed
under French dominion. The constitutional Govern-
ment of both countries has been destroyed by French
intrigue, yet the French rage as if they were the
injured parties. There is no sense or reason in the
present proceedings of LOUIS PHILIPPE'S Government,
and they may depend upon the fact, that the other
nations of Europe, are not disinterested spectators of
these aggressive schemes. England, thank GOD, is
able to deeend herself. She is not easily moved—she
preserves for a long time that silence afreux which
the French army can appreciate, but when her dignity
or her interests are in danger, no country rushes to
the contest with more determined courage. We
should regret to see it put to the proof—we wish to
live in peace with the French people, who have many
good qualities, but the gasconade of their press, and
the encroachments of their Government, in a sphere
which affect our possessions both in the Mediterranean
and India, have increased to such a pitch, that even
the warmest friends of peace can no longer be silent.

It would be a short-sighted and unwise policy in
the present Government, indeed, to persevere in that
fatal neglect of the most important of all the inte-
rests connected with our coasting trade, which so
many preceding Governments, equally with them-
selves, have been so justly chargeable—on any plea
of having their attention exclusively engrossed by
the present aspect of our foreign relations. There
are popular occupations in the welfare of which—
albeit they rank among the most hardy and pre-
carious which are followed by the humbler classes of
our maritime population—matters of the most essen-
tial and immediate concernment to the security and
honour of the empire at large are indissolubly bound
up. Among these our FISHERIES are entitled to take
the very first rank. We place them, avowedly, before
even our Royal Navy, for the Fisheries are the
school which form the sailors who are to man our
ships and to protect our coasts. Whether we con-
sider them merely in reference to this destination, or
as the purveyors of that vast proportion of healthful
and nutritious food which they supply fur the daily
consumption of an immense portion of our abound-
ing population ;—whether we reflect upon the ready
and effective reinforcement they supply to us in time
of war, on an element to which they may be said to
be native, and amidst whose tempests they can pur-
sue with spirit and confidence the service they are
appointed to, whilst less practised hands shrink ap-
palled from the execution of any duty, through the
fury of storms and the consciousness of surrounding
perils--or we look upon them, only, as ministering to
the first great and universal wants of all human
society ;—we are bound to regard the brave and
hardy seamen engaged in our fisheries with pecu-
liar favour. But it is notorious that we have for
many years greatly forgotten our duty in this re-
spect. They have complained, by memorials, to the
Board of Trade—petitions to Parliament—remon-
strances to the influential people of their vicinities ;
they have shown how the larger boats of the French
and Dutch fishermen have committed successive en-
croachments on their fishing grounds from time to
time, accompanied sometimes with acts of violence to
the person ; at others with the destruction of their
nets and tackle. Their complaints have been too
often wholly disregarded, or replied to by measures
that have proved wholly ineffective : such as conven-
tions negotiated between our own and other Govern-
ments whose boats have presently treated them as
mere waste paper—and been permitted to do so with
all but absolute impunity. It is curious to remark
how much the national value of our own Fisheries was
underrated—how dimly suspected the policy of en-
couraging such nurseries of our maritime strength—
before the days in which our PETTYS, and TEMPLES,
and CHILDES, our CAMPBELLS, ANDEESONS, OSWALDS,
and SMITHS, succeeded in awakening and fixing
public attention to the subject. If a wholesome
jealousy was aroused for a brief season, under the
first of the STUARTS, to prohibit to all foreigners the
right of fishing on our coasts, in twenty-seven years
afterwards, under his successor, 30,0001. were ac-
cepted from the Dutch as the price of rescinding that
prohibition, and leaving them at liberty to monopo-
lise the fisheries of a large portion of our coasts. The
wiser Scotch had already extended and protected
their herring fishery for five centuries when the
" Herring Statute" of 1357 was passed; but al.
though with the English this invaluable fish had be-
come an article of extensive commerce since the dis-
covery of the process for pickling them in 1390,
nearly four centuries elapsed before the incorporation
of our British Herring Fishing Company. In that
interval the aggressions and encroachments our fisher-
men had to sustain had been repeatedly pressed by
the Crown on the attention of Parliament as fitting
objects for its intervention, and as calling for more
effectual protection at the hands of the Executive.
Of our ancient fishery at Newfoundland, which we
have pursued in that distant colony ever since 1577,
we only speak here because it has notoriously proved
often a grand feeder of the Navy with able-bodied
and excellent seamen, and because foreign encroach-
ments on the cod fishery grounds around that large
island have been the actual cause of fierce hostilities
and subsequent treaties between this country and the
Crowns of Spain and France, the States of Holland,
&c. Our whaling fishery, like the others, has fear-
fully declined of late years, and with it the profitable
employment of some of the stoutest merchant ship-
ping, and the most thorough and intrepid sailors
which this country could produce.
It occurs to us that it would well consist with that
policy of nautical preparation on which we dwelt at
large in a recent article, and at the same time operate
as a boon of well-deserved encouragement to a set of
men whose claims upon the favour of their country
have been too often and too long slighted, to adopt
some ibitTledlate and general plan of registration that
should include a perfect calendar of every fishing-
boat on every part of the coast, its tonnage, names,
and numbers of present owners, and crews, occupation
(or branch of fishing), limits of its usual fishing, &c.
The value of this craft, when information of what is
passing in the harbour on the other side of the Channel,
is inappreciable. For these services, and for bounties
on their volunteering into Queen's ships when re-
quired, &c., &c., funds should be appropriated ; and
the same operation might likewise include further
provision for wounds, pensions for long service, &c.
We are confident that, in the disastrous event of a
war, a previously-matured scheme of this sort would
prove of the most essential benefit to the recruiting
reserves necessary for the maintenance of our naval
arm in its full vigour and readiness. For the
happier object of preserving the continuance of
peace, it would be an emphatic demonstration of the
completeness of our preparations for war. In either
case it would secure the active and energetic vigilance
of a body of men whose local knowledge of the
coasts of both countries, and the incidents of tides,
currents, shoals, &c., at various points, would render
them the best adapted corps of marine observation, if
we may so speak, that we could possibly hope to
organise. And not the least curious fact connected
with this notion is, that the plan of such an organisa-
tion, and the machinery for registering such a force,
are already set out in the " Second Annual Report of
the Commissioners of Ireland" (presented to Parlia-
ment pursuant to 5 and 6 Viet., c. 106, s. 122).
We shall have occasion to give some extracts from
this document in a day or two, and we will on that
occasion more particularly commend the simple, but
effective plan, of registration devised by the Commis-
sioners to the reader's attention.

In referring our readers to the proceedings at the
Gravesend Police of the 25th instant, of which we
have published a very full report, we are desirous of
showing in how remarkable a degree they affect the
interests and convenience of that very considerable
portion of our metropolitan population, which we may