NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE event of the week has been a speech by the British Ambassador in Paris to the British Chamber of Com- merce there. Sir Edmund Monson began with compli- ments to his hosts, regrets for the loss of Sir E. Blount, and comments on the difference between the old and the new diplomacy, but then plunged, " after much reflection, and even anxiety," into more important subjects. He thought the French had underrated recent speeches in England, bolding them to be rather fireworks than what they were,—namely, electrical discharges produced by " systematic and inju- dicious" friction. The French were mistaken, for the speeches represented the sentiment of a unanimous people, and he hoped that the idea of the British being a squeezable nation would now disappear. England had no aggressive designs, and could admire expansion in other nations;—was, indeed, as cordial towards France as he doubted not the bulk of Frenchmen were towards us. He would therefore earnestly ask the French to discountenance and to abstain from the continuance of that policy of pin-pricks " which, while it can only procure an ephemeral gratification to a short-lived Ministry, must inevitably perpetuate across the Channel an irritation which a high-spirited nation must eventually feel to be intolerable. He would entreat them to resist the temptation to try to thwart British enterprise by petty mancenvres such as he grieved to see suggested by the proposal to set up educational establishments as rivals to our own in the newly conquered provinces of the Soudan. That was an ill-considered provocation, and might have the result of converting a policy of forbearance from taking full advantage of victory into the adoption of measures which are not the object at which French policy is aiming."
