The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-06 00:00:00

Obvaing (7-Atit4

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1845.

We do not think it necessary to put our readers upon
their guard against the exaggerated spirit in which those
articles that we have extracted from some of the French
journals, on the subject of the affair at Tamatave, on
the coasts of Madagascar, are written. The hatred of
England—that hatred which is sure to be produced in un-
generous minds by the recollection of past defeats on the
part of their own country, and of extreme moderation
in victory upon ours—is the rankling passion to which
the Censtitutionnel (and, we are sorry to add, the Journal
des Debats of late) are constantly appealing. It is that
demon, ever jealous of the increasing respect and friend-
ship which the two great rivals on the theatre of human
civilisation and political grandeur are reciprocally mani-
festing for one another, as the lapse of years rolls
back the epoch of their last destructive contests,
which is incessantly invoked by the unprincipled
writers of a party that cannot hope fcr influence or
power in the direction of public affairs in France, except
in a season of wars abroad and tumultuous factions at
home. To the Moloch-worship of this Ent. ONE the
political fanatics we speak of would freely sacrifice, if
rthesetrai
strong arm ar
public the
einion did not chain down
law, and the yet stronger
their turbulent activity, all that is great
and estimable in France and in England ; and,
in the very first instance, that good understanding be-
tween the two Governments in the maintenance of which
ille off
the peace and happiness of Europe and of the world
at large are so deeply interested. We will not do so
much honour to the rancorous speculations in which the
political jealousy of these writers has been lately in-
dulging on the event of the attack on Tamatave by a
joint force of English and French sailors as to
re-quote them. That attack resulted, it is well
known, in a virtual discomfiture of their European
assailants by the native Malgacbees, whose intre-
pidity availed itself to the full of all the advan-
tages by which it was aided—a position of remark-
able strength, well improved, excellently fortified, and
defended by numbers very far exceeding those of their
assailants, with cannon that seem to have been well
served. The disparity of the loss respectively sustained
by the French and the English crews, united in this
conjoint operation (on the merits or misma-
nagement of which it is impossible to pronounce
any opinion in the absence of official accounts and docu-
ments) has supplied the mctivo of a whole chorus of
grumblers, accusers, and bellicose malcontents in the
French newspapers. But their indignation and their
insinuations, their suspicions and their irascibility, are
alike too ridiculous to be gravely dealt with or seriously
answered, excited, as these purport to be, by the fact
that seventeen of the French and only four of the Eng-
lish crews fell in this attack. The French journals can-
not, or will not, understand how this disparity of loss
can have occurred. They seem to be incapable of so
much elevation of sentiment as to attribute it to a most
unnatural, but a generous ardour on the part of their
own sailors, to distinguish their bravery and resolution
under the very unusual circumstances of being associated
with ours in a descent upon a common enemy. They
seem equally oblivious of the fact that the governor of
one of their own colonies, having directed or organised
the expedition, in all probability assigned the
post of honour, that is of danger, to those
who bore the flag of France. But the speculations of
these journalists on the disaster which has
been sustained at Tamatave ought not to be without
their fruits. They should suggest matter to us of very
grave reflection. No one who is aware of the extensive
circulation of the Debats, to say nothing of the talent
with which the Paris Constitutionnel is written, or of the
general ability and widely-diffused sale of other French
papers, devoted to the same hostile depreciation of Eng-
land, her power, her resources, her strength, her
policy, and the motives which it suits their purposes
to attribute to that policy,—whether the subject of their
animadversionsbe one of European or Asiatic interest—of