The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-31 00:00:00

ettril Vattion

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS!

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.

GLOBE.—Our French neighbours certainly are
curious fellows. The position they have assumed,
and the voies de fait by which they have followed it
up, may be considered as in some respects parallel to
our own in 1840. They have acted is reliance on
English neutrality—and with the covert zest of a
revanche against English policy. They have mainly
laboured to demonstrate to Abd-er-Rahman (the
Prince de Joinville's dispatch, which our readers will
find elsewhere, says it in so many words) that they
could " hit him hard, for he had no friends." That is
to say, that England could not, or would not, befriend
him. This is precisely what offended them so
sorely in our proceedings towards Mehemet Ali.
Well !—having had their revanche—having demon-
strated to the Mussulman the only truth that Chris-
tian Powers ever take the trouble to demonstrate
to Mussulmen—namely, that they, the said Chris-
tian Powers, are able to drub them at discretion—
having taken this very cogent method of over•
coming the Moorish repugnance to the new reli-
gion of Algiers (the opera, and cafés d trois bil-
lards)—one would think what our neighbours face-
tiously call their public mind might rest on its
laurels. They might remember how very coolly we
took their wrath and our triumphs at Acre. Nothing
resembling any sort of effervescence in the way of
glory or anti-Gallicanism appeared anywhere in the
haunts where cocknies most do congregate. The
veni-vidi-vici feat of Acre, and the prompt clearance
of Syria, were matters which seemed to be deemed
worthy of business-like entry at most, as accounts
settled ; and as regarded any triumphant memorial of
them, we remember none but the metrical log of a
Jack Tar—

" The Castor's guns were thirty-sir,
Not one of them a quaker ;
The Castor's 1130/1 they fought like bricks—
And so we took John Acre."

Our French neighbours manage things differently.
Nothing will serve them—apropos of this last proof
of what was already indubitable—namely, that semi-
barbarous courage cannot withstand courage, tactics,
and discipline—nothing will serve them but chorussing
with immense enthusiasm that opera-song of theirs
which sets forth that Englishmen never shall reign in
France

"Jamais en France,
Jamais l'Anglais ne regnera !"
The French bully Morocco, and thereupon sing
" The English shall not reign in France !" There
may be more of logical sequence than we can trace in
these facts and deductions. We can only say that we
think such sallies very silly, and very undignified. So,
we are satisfied, the whole reflecting portion of the
French public must think them. The English never
shall reign in France ! As if the English, these three
centuries, had ever shown the slightest ambition
to reign in France ! As if the English had ever
engaged in such schemes of empire as Louis XIV.,
who took the House of Stuart into pay—and had his
purchase sent home to him accordingly. As if the
English had ever indulged in such day-dreams about
remodelling the Rue Vivienne or its passages as Na-
poleon favoured us by doing about the Strand, which
he magnificently meant to have greatly widened
for us—a feat we have in some measure ma-
naged to achieve without him. The 'external
greatness of England in modern times has arisen
from no policy of external domination. Her mer-
cantile and colonial enterprises have required sup-
port and protection ; awl she has given them. Eng-
land has not begun by conquest, in order to found
new empires ; but conquests have been forced upon
her—factories have become empires against her will.
Europe knows well, or ought to know well, that it
has no inroads to fear from England. Does it know
as much as regards France ? Do not our spirited
neighbours indulge in remembrances of conquest and
domination, which England has not indulged in these
three centuries ? Is there not something ludicrous in
reviving recollections of English rule in France; when
that which is fresh in all Europe's memory, and in
her own, is the European empire of France ? But
there is nothing sincere in this stanza; except the
vulgar ill-feeling of it. It is not that England wants
to rule in France, or that the worst-informed Parisian
even thinks so—but that England does not want
France to threaten her and others in the safety of
their dominions. The policy of England is that
of European independence and peaceful commerce.
Is that the policy dictated by the present war party
in France? The National, for instance, is calling
out loudest for war with England. Not very long
back, the National declared that its patterns
of foreign policy were Louis XlV.—and the
Committee of Public Safety. The juxta-posi-
tion of these names was a sufficient proof of
the real nature of that liberty which revived
Jacobin republicanism really means, when it
uses the word. It is not the liberty to do as they
please : that is a mere English shopkeeping doctrine.
It is the liberty to make every one else do as they
please—the doctrine followed out alike by Louis
XIV., and the Committee of Public Safety. The
Times dismisses as follows (without mentioning)
the supposition that our Government had interfered
with French occupation at Mogadore :—"Having
admitted that a legitimate cause of war exists between
these two independent States, it would be puerile in
us to cavil at every incident which may take place in
the course of hostilities. Our business is simply to
take care that the cause of the war is not converted
into a cause of aggrandisement, and that the issue of
the contest be not such as to infringe upon our own
national interests, and on the balance of power." Cer-
tainly it is our business to put salt on the bird's tail ;
for then we shall catch it.