The Express. — 1853-05-09 (London, England)

ADDRESS FROM FRE ENGLISHMEN.  The Mayor of Newcastle has received through the hands of the French Ambassador in London, the following reply of the inhabitants of Nantes to the address lately , forwarded to that city by the people of Newcastle. This interesting document, of which we give below a translaLion, contains about 2,500 names, and is about G 3 feet loaf. It is mounted on calico, for the purpose of preservation, and should receive a place among the local atchives se a record of the cordial feelings created by the interchange of commerce. The Mayor of Nantes, with the prefect of the Loire, head the list, and are followed by a number of the first merchants and persons of importance in the place. And while such evidence of commercial friendliness exists, third are sufficient proofs of the extension of the good feeling to the humbler classes among the French people, and an apparent manifestation that the connexion may not only be one of the interests 6f commerce, but the no less real end abiding interests of humanity. The Ambassador of FlllllOll presents his compliments to the Mayor of the Town of Newcastle and he has the honour of sending him enclosed an address of the principal inhabitants of the city of Nantes, which the courier of the embassy brought him this morning. 22, Grosvenor-square, London, April 22, 1863. Reply of the Inhabitants of the Town of Nantes to the Address of the Inhabitants of the Town of Newautle-upon• Tyne. Friends of Great Britain, Industry and commerce fulfil the reveries of ancient philoophers—frontiers are effaced, prejudices vanish, the animosities of asthma disappear. If there really be • progress, evident, indisputable, and marvellously realised in the spirit of the people, that progress is " Peace." Peace has inherited the old popularity of war. In 1848, at the close of a revolution which bad stirred up so many passions, France proclaimed peace. More lately an august and sincere authority nobly confirmed that attitude of the republic, in saying " The Empire is Peace,; ' and trusting in these promises, the country returned to the empire, sheltering, as it has been said, her destinies under • majestic souvenir of glory, bat careless of adding other laurels to her military crown. This inclination towards a pacific futuie is not caprice, Is not a passing fondness. It is an opinion inherited by the public from the authority of philosophy and religion. ' Europe, the whole of Europe, without excepting one country, without excepting cne government, wishes for peace. There it no longer • warlike nobility, no longer a' , military knighthood, there are no longer pmfessional soldiersloving war for the sake of war, or for glory or ooa quest. There are in our day owners of property, merchants, and workmen, people who think, who love peace for their own interest, and who certainly would not snake war but when peace would be • cowardice. Bog emotion, and all interests, become obstacles to thee, gigantic murders which have so long :desolated humsnity, and impoverished states. A. French writer has said, " that to cultivate peace is to turn the last and most ble page of the Gospel." He has mid truly. And if from these sublime religious thoughts we descend to commoner and human considerations, are we not correct in thinking that the enormous resources absorbed in keeping up large and useless armies, would have found a much better application in the creation of harbours, in the formation of roads, and in the foundation of useful public institutions. A truth deeply felt by one of your illustrious countrymen, Mr. Cobden, who has so wittily chastised that perpetual out-bidding of fleets and levies, that barren agreement of enlistments and armies, which governments make with each other. The keel of a vessel of war, said he, is no sooner pad down at Brest, than the hammer resounds in the workshops of Portsmouth ; a new forge puffs at Cherbourg, and beheld the sparks of a new anvil fly out at Portsmouth. Monstrous folly ! The system of armed peace Nu cost France from 1831 to 1849, to the great injury of the national industry, 274 millions sterling. How true it is, then, as Voltaire says, writing of the conquests of Louis