The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-07 00:00:00

FRENCH EXPIILSSS.

In our City article of this day a subject is glanced
at which has attracted and deserves no ordinary at-
tention from the commercial classes of England.* We
mean the trickery which appears to be resorted to by
the French Government in their dealing with the
Indian news which our vessels bring to Marseilles.
Our readers have probably long been familiar with
those arbitrary interferences, unsanctioned even by
their own not very independent Courts of Law, by
which they have exerted themselves to impede the
transmission :of news safely and accurately to the
English Press. It is not easy for an uninitiated
public to detect the inducements to that apparently
gratuitous sacrifice of character which necessarily at-
tends upon a despotic and obnoxious course, pursued,
as we have said, in the very teeth of formal decisions
pronounced by French Courts in favour of the rights
of the foreign Press, and literally condemning the
Government's conduct. These acts, however, of
oppression may be carried on without that very
instant notoriety which is the necessary and
almost
__immediate result of their present pro,-
ceedings. The proprietors of a journal may be un-
willing to plunge themselves fairly into a contest
with the Government of one of the great European'
Powers, and the matter may blow over. Justice,
even when thereis a fair prospect of getting it, may
not alwayS be worth the difficulties and disadvantages
which are its price. Those who are obliged or who
are anxious to run their couriers, however legally,
across the whole length of France, are too dependent
upon the. vexatious impediments which Government
may be pleased to interpose willingly to provoke its
hostility. The last Indian mail, however, has fur-
nished occasion for a bolder experiment. The most
important statement of the telegraphic despatch for-
warded and announced to the public by Government
authorities has been found to be utterly unjustified by
the details of the Indian news. A statement was
coined by somebody, calculated to produce—and
which did produce—a visible effect on prices, and the
falsity of which must have occasioned losses as serious
as undeserved to those who founded their speculations
upon it.

This is no longer a private but a public injury. It
is an act of dishonesty which calls forth the reproba-
tion, not of one, or two, or three individuals, but of
the 'commercial classes of two great countries. It is
an act which a Government, or a Government func-
tionary, would hardly have ventured upon from the
mere caprice of power or personal animosity. Its im-
portance is too great, its detection too certain and too
immediate, to admit of this hypothesis. We do not
know whether the business morality of the Bourse at
Paris is less exacting than that which reigns in the
commercial circles of London ; but let our readers
conceive the indignation which would burst upon the
head of ony member or employe of an English Cabinet,
who, having in his hands correct and important ac-
counts, was proved to have deliberately misled specula-
tion by publishing, with the authority of Government,
a garbled or perverted statement of them. Even in
this country, we say, where stock jobbing., is not an
ordinary crime of Ministers, such a breach of faith to
the public, such an abuse f powers delegated for the
public service, would elicit not merely energetic com-
plaints of carelessness and consequent injury, but
pointed and unsparing accusations of interested dis-
honesty. Nor certainly would our knowledge of
French politics lead us to be more chary of our in-
ferences with respect to the authors of Vt.he present
deception, even if report did not point to a gentleman
high in the confidence of M. Guizot as not very cre-
dita')ly implicated in the manoeuvre. The transactions
of the Cabinet and of the Bourse have unfortunately
been too' frequently mixed up in that country to
allow us to wonder at, or dismiss as incredible, such
an accusation, however much we may regret the stain
which it casts upon a Ministry to which we wish well.
Nor is this trick much less discreditable in a na-
tional than in a commercial point of view. It is some
considerable advantage to the French port of Mar-
seilles 'to be made the rendezvous of our East Indian
packets. It is not altogether a matter of indifference,
whether or not the current of communication and of
voyagers which those packets occasion is carried to
England through Marseilles and Paris, or by some
other and independent route. We do not wish to
magnify this convenience or advantage ; but a con-
venience and advantage it certainly is which is con-
ferred upon parts of France in this choice of a har-
bour by the English Post-office. Call it even a con-
fidence, a compliment—and in return even for such
an act of friendship, fair play, one would think, might
at least be expected ; and an English Ministry might
fairly complain at finding a power which they had
confided to their allies thus unscrupulously abused to
the misleading of themselves and the British public—
to the creation of false impressions, not, perhaps, at
the present moment of any very vital importance to
their interests, but which, in other and more critical
circumstances, might exert a serious influence upon
their Parliamentary or other political contests.
But it might be answered that we are reversing the
relations of the parties ; that if we are to strike a
debtor and creditor account at all, France is not fa-
voured in being made the means of transit for our
Indian intelligence, but favours England by allowing
herself to become so ; that we have no choice in the
matter, and must for our own interests take the only
safe and rapid means of gaining our news, and be
thankful that that is permitted us.
We think not. It is, we believe, a mistake to sup-
pose that the shortest route by which news can be
transmitted from Alexandria to London is that by
Marseilles ; and taking into consideration the system
of impediment at present pursued by France, we
have little doubt that, by an arrangement with Aus-
tria and other German Governments, an equally
speedy communication might be effected through
Venice, which would shake us free of the petty and
unworthy obstacles to which we are now liable ; and
we presume there can be little question of-the readi-
ness with which Austria would second an arrange-
ment so conducive to the prosperity of a seaport of
her own, of which she is wisely and naturally
anxious to increase the importance.
We should be glad to believe that the misconduct
of which we have now to complain resulted from the
ignorance, the misapprehension, the animosity, or the
hurry of a mere subordinate. It is with reluctance
that we admit the suspicion that any functionaries of
a higher rank in public opinion, and in the responsi-
bilities of their office can be parties to a proceeding
so discreditable. Nor, indeed, should we have al-
lowed that suspicion to enter our minds were the pre-
sent a mere isolated case. Unfortunately we have
ourselves had reason to complain that it is not so, and
from the treatment which has been perseveringly ad-
ministered, in spite of justice and declared law, to our-
selves and others, we are compelled to conclude that
there is some more powerful influence at work than
the officer in charge of a telegraph—that it is not to an
agent but to a principal, not to an accident but to a
system, that these dishonest tamperings are due. And
for the sake of justice we are glad that they have now
reached a point which brings them into conflict, nik
with the protests and actions at law of, detached indi-
viduals, but with the powerful voices of those in-
fluential classes who do no t usually exert their voices
in such matters in vain.—Times.