New-York tribune., 1875-12-27
FRENCH TOPICS.

PARIS Dec. 1.-Since the subsistence of the last
war nothing occurring outside the circle OF do
nestle politics has stirred nearly so deep and gem
eral emotion hero as the suddenly announced
English Suez Canal operation. II may be all very
well for President Lesseps, who surely should speak
with knowledge, to represent il as merely business
transaction to say that England, after having, from
the origin of the great French enterprise mp 10
within two weeks not only declined TO take stock IN
il, but been busy in rdiculing, impeding, and en-
barrassing the plan execution and development of
the work has now simply come to take new prac-
tcal view of it, and that amount of stock in it that
set apart and offered to her as her portion long
years ago, and to infer from this union between
English and French capital the happiest results for
the purely industrial and necessarily pacific de-
velopment of the Universal Maritime Canal" This
may be sufficiently clear and comprehensive from
the point of view of material shareholder in this
Universal Canal, but is something narrow and in
sufficient to the Frenchman who feels himself, as
most Frenchmen, a sort of sentimental shareholder
in this French canal. OF course n sentiment that is
not ours is ridiculous sentimentality. Your flag,
with all its sentimental values as symbol is but
three-colored rag to me. 1t was by force alone of
French national sentiment furnishing the money
snews for the peaceful work, held in the time by
the practical English to be sIipremely ridiculous,
That tins very canal was carried through lrou thc
Mediterranean To the Arabian Gulf
No Frenchman nationally can, rational French
man does pretend that England has done an act hos
tile to France. 1t is the way and manner of the
doing as much as the act done, that hurts the ma
tonal amour propre That it was inspired by politi-
cal considerations looks to grave political sequences.
and is an actualiy Of grave bearing on the Eastern
Question, are hardly disputable propositi0ns-cer-
tanly not much disputed in these parts. The bitter
ness is that England, the sometime close and
shoulder-to-shouder fighting ally of France in the
Eastern Question concerns, now completes TINS trans
action without so much as a remark to the address Of
much les any slightest consultation with France IL
is this being left coOy out of consideration in an AZ
fair of general European import that hurts; hurts all
the that such omission is not cause OF reason
able resentment nor, though 1t were ineXcusable to
be efficiently resented. 1t hurts as bitter re-
minder of the secondary place in European councils
where France was reduced by the late war and must
yet sit By this derivation the Suez Canal pur-
chase as by some more less injurious other deri
vation a revolutionary movement in Kamtschatka,
or volcanic eruptions in the mOOn would by stress of
party spirit, he forced to un-runs into French do
nestle politics. and Bonapartsts tax Republicans
Republicans Bonapartists, and what is character
istically presumpUous Bufetarians tax both but
especially Republicans with this well other Of
the mshaps befallen France.
Whether the charge against Minister of Foreign
Affairs Decazes which you may hear fully presented
IN private conversations aud may read broad hints
of in opposition prints TO the effect that he had full
opportunity left unused to anticipate the English
purchase-and on better than the terms accepted by
the English-whether this grave charge be well
founded have no means of knowing. The strongest
show of argument against him in the case is the
.f hlra atf atopfnI
in tie editorial columns of yesterdays NOnbeW, the
favorite friendly organ of the Minister of Foreign
Affairs Despite such few documentary eXplana-
tons as have vet appeared, of which next TO Tor say
With Lessepss circular letter published to-day by
NJ. Deryien of the banking house of A. Dervien Il
Co.. of Alexandria, is by far the most detailed-the
English purchase of the Khedyos shares in the new
(Anglo) universal maritime canal still belongs
largely to secret history.
Your correspondent has only to attempt TO report
the patent expressions of feeling and opirion pro-
yoked here by the known fact of the purchase. To
this chapter il should be added to what is written
above that the purchase, not by shareholders who
chance TO be Englishmen but by the English Gov
erninent, of nearly onc-half-the large beginning of
the end-of what was in its inception, and till lately
the wholly FrancO-Egyptian Canal disagreeabIy
affects the French as a sort of buying their thunder.
Along with their loss of prestige and place in Eu-
ropcan councils which the fact and manner and
other conditions of the purchase painfully indicate
to all the world, goes their prestige in tho East.
Practically, as we are apt TO understand the word.
this last prestige may have never been Of much
worth to France, but from Napoeons worse than
waste crazy Egyptian campaign, from the the time
Of Louis XIV, nay, from the tme-nOt 10 go back
to the deluge-of the Crusadcs, its sustenncc has
been constant element in the practced policy of
French Government and itself if an Illusion afavor-
ite one with the French Ii is now lost illusion,
In the midst of these unpleasantncsses, the gener-
ally kept good temper and clear good sense of the
French is observable. For examples sake, did
say! Patriotic Chauvinism forbidl The carica-
turists of the illustrated papers manage 80 be
smart witty even without being nastily gross This
comes perhaps from tlfe tact they really artists
Several editors of the serious journals indulge
in more or less lively and mockine comments on the
coarse money power of the English, aud their coarse
practical way of using il for their selfish interests
as though the French were such exceptionally I'M
humany natarals to desire the exaation OF their
France purely in the interest of other folks. Apart
from this national foolishncss, common a. To be
partly pardonable by the rest of MS, nothing hasbeen
written said in respect of the Suez transaction
which even a sensitive English Chauy mist need rea
sonably except 10.
Il
high swashbuckler and eptiint terrible of the Bona
partsts Paul Granier de Cassagnacl, was the curl
osity of the day. Ii has since had some not quite
calculated nor quite unmportant consequences.
Because of its sub-soil dcmagOgic frankly kapole-
onic promises of impossible repeals of taxes heavily
resting during all the late reign on the poorer
classes such as the Ocrol, of cheap abundance and
unrestraned animal enjoyment, To he fulfilled on
sole condition of fourth Imperial restoration,
the less bold and honest managers Of the Bonaparist
troupe beginning with prudent exceptions to such