TOPICS OF THE DAY.
IS IT PEACE?
M. Jotrun.tri has been at it again,—writing his " prose" ; and the Times thinks there is really something in it ! He has made a discovery, that we English do not treat the French as equals, but, ever boastfully mindful of Waterloo, have "con- ceived the pretension of taking France in tow." On the strength of this, and other manifestoes of equal weight, our own great journal thinks "the time has come when it is most friendly and most wise to speak plainly and openly." Whether it is friendly or not, wise or not, our contemporary has spoken plainly and openly, and since he is able to give to any view which he adopts a circulation embracing the entire globe, the question of peace or war with France has become flagrant on both sides of the Chan- nel, by this time engages all Europe, and is not to be hushed down by any manner of men. It is indeed discussed in the most alarmist tone. The Times thus sums up the import of its general information- M. Jotrun.tri has been at it again,—writing his " prose" ; and the Times thinks there is really something in it ! He has made a discovery, that we English do not treat the French as equals, but, ever boastfully mindful of Waterloo, have "con- ceived the pretension of taking France in tow." On the strength of this, and other manifestoes of equal weight, our own great journal thinks "the time has come when it is most friendly and most wise to speak plainly and openly." Whether it is friendly or not, wise or not, our contemporary has spoken plainly and openly, and since he is able to give to any view which he adopts a circulation embracing the entire globe, the question of peace or war with France has become flagrant on both sides of the Chan- nel, by this time engages all Europe, and is not to be hushed down by any manner of men. It is indeed discussed in the most alarmist tone. The Times thus sums up the import of its general information- " Without, so far as we are aware, the slightest provocation on the part of England, there exists in France at this moment a very strong and very wide-spread hostility to the Government and people of this country." "A feeling of hostility more bitter than has existed since the peace of 1815 is at this moment entertained towards this country." . . . "England is hated, and a war with her earnestly desired by the clergy, the Legitimists, the Army, and the inhabitants of the Northern provinces of France."
And how' asks the writer, does all this happen,—how has it been brought about ? In France there are but two ways in which the body of the nation can be acted upon—by the Press, and by the Executive; and through the effects the Times discerns the working causes. The Government can cheek the Press at will ; but not to cheek these outbreaks proves the absence of the will to do so. The Minister of the Interior can put in motion the enor- mous corps of officials, which ramifies through every department. "The Minister of War has only to give the word, and thousands of zealous emissaries are ready to propagate it like lightning through the ranks of 600,000 men." "Has this influence been used in the present instance to excite the feel- ings of citizen and soldier against England ? We believe it has, and we be- lieve it for three reasons. First, we believe it because it is quite clear that an instrument less secret, and in the present state of society in France less efficient,—the Press,—has been employed for this purpose. We believe it, secondly, because the results are such as an action of the Government upon the people would be likely to produce ; and we believe it, thirdly, because we have observed in the open acts of the Government of France symptoms that it does not shrink from stimulating ill-will against this country. We will mention two instances—first, the issuing the medal of St. Helena, and, secondly, the,ereetion at the public expense of a monument to commemorate a repulse sustained by the English on the coast of Brittany a hundred years
ago.
"We have therefore, we think, established that there is considerable irri- tation in the mind of the French Army and nation against England, and that that irritation has mainly been caused by the action of the French Go- vernment."
Some of the allegations in this categorical account equal the prose complaints of M. Jourdain ; who to show that we treat France as an inferior, complains that England opposes the Suez canal, has taken possession of Perim, stifles the Ionian popu- lations under a dominion hateful to them, and is "mistress of India without having been able to plant there a principle or an idea." How all this shows our superiority to France we do not understand. We do not oppose the Suez canal, but Stephen- son staked his great repute on the fact that it is impracticable, and hence shares of an interesting project have never floated in our market. As to Perim it is not nearly so big as Algeria, &c. Ionia was foisted, upon us by a settlement which was not dictated by us. And if we do not "plant ideas," surely the omission leaves us the inferiority rather than otherwise ! But, in like manner, we fail to see why we ought to be indignant about the Brittany monument, or why we should feel the slightest sensi- tiveness on the score of St. Helena medals. According to the view of these peace advocates—for both profess that their fa- vourite smoking is the calumet—each nation, passive and benign, is preparing to defend itself against the aggressive aspect of the other. The French Cassandra takes the alarm about Perim, the Suez fiats, our unpopularity in Ionia, and our want of ideas in India, and thinks it necessary to arm against those singular signs of assumed superiority,—the more as we English are oppressed under the weight of an exclusive aristocracy ; while the English Laoeoon is startled by a monument in Brittany, a few copper medals, and a galaxy of leading articles. So M. Jourdain, fre- mens ore cruenth, throws open the temple of Janus, and the English journal proclaims the horrid act
" Quoniam belli fern mcenera Mayors Armipotens regit !"
That "there is something in it," appears if only from the fact that M. Michel Chevalier, M. Peyrat, and. other sound political publicists, think it necessary to exert all their faculties in coun- teracting the agitation; but that war is inevitable, even the Times doubts. "From this it necessarily follows that the French Government wishes that irritation to exist, but it does not neces- sarily follow that the French Government has resolved to go to War with this country." And the admission is followed by a string of &eases as to the possible motives. There is' then, a mystery, mlith some great significant fact beneath it. Now, without resOrting to guesses speaking only by the card of trust- worthy infoimation, we will do our best to penetrate the mystery and to tinfoil& what lies beneath it.
It is in no`way the interest of France to attack England,—but it may suit the temper of some persons in France, and it may be thus congenial precisely to those who take the initiative both in noisy demonstration and in action. And although it may not be the interest of the vast community, its multitudinous middle class and its hosts of labourers, it would actually advance the selfish interests or supposed nobler interests of some parties ; for few men are merely selfish. Thus the soldier, eager to make fields for his own promotion, raises the war cry in a hymn to the idol of his heart—" the glory of his country." The contractor, sighing for a renewal of the days of Sebastopol and Magenta, whose fires touched not him, reads with enthusiastic sympathy the just diatribes against a proud shopkeeping. nation that dis- courages the opportunities for war-contracts. The Ultramontanist veritably believes that M. Veuillot is about, Napoleone favente, to pull down the Island Antichrist. And there is a peculiar Absolutist party near to the councils of France, which has close family con- nexions with Italian dynasties, has even royal pretensions of its own under the shelter of alien eagles, and would be glad indeed to earn the thanks of Emperors and Kaisers for achieving the downfall of England, the representative in Europe of constitu- tional government, without which there would be no Belgium, no noise in Spain, no trouble in Germany, no Central Italy, no thought of Poland, save as to the restoration of princely dignities. But these parties are not the Emperor, nor is he misled by their narrow views. Although not unmoved by the sentiments of reli- gion, he is, as he has shown to the Cardinal Archbishop at Bor- deaux, no bigot. He designs to establish his throne on the solid basis of a people's gratitude, and he knows that the sensible mer- chant classes of ranee, from Marseilles to Dunkirk, and the industrial classes generally, not only wish for peace now, but will derive from it a prosperity which they will ascribe to him. If France is behind any other 'countries in any thing,—and the instances are few,—it is in the race of peaceful invention and industrial development ; and already the Emperor has not only designed to endow France with those blessings, but has selected in M. Michel Chevalier the best of guides for the appointed inauguration of the policy in 1860. The most trusted adviser of the Emperor has represented to him how the earliest of his allies is the most to be relied on, her very constitution forbidding her to nourish any concealed or subversive ambitions ; and how, with England at his back, he can defy all the doubtful rest of Europe. And that all this is known, and explainable to French intelligence, we have on evidence, in the lucid sense of M. Peyrat. Known it may be, and most true, and yet it does not settle the question. No man, however (concentrated. authority may be, possesses absolute power. With all his extraordinary faculties, the Emperor Napoleon cannot do everything himself; he must, perforce, employ agents, in almost all cases, less discreet than himself, less elevated in their views. He arrives at a complicated, difficult, and embarrassing juncture in affairs. He is tenacious for peace. His experiences of war have shown him that if it is easy for another Napoleon to reap the red harvest of glory, it is gathered at a sacrifice to his race against which his sickened heart revolts, and he has declared that he will have no more of the scourge upon earth if he can rule the decision. He is firm for peace ; he is troubled to keep a check upon those about him who are eager for war ; and it is easy to imagine the inconvenience, the needless trouble, the just irritation caused, to him in such a position, by conduct on this side which affords a pretext for the firebrands whom he desires to rebuke.
For he knows that it is not our interest to go to war, and we need not pretend that it is. Ask the Public Stocks, if the ques- tion were mooted for a single moment. Ask our men on strike, our manufacturing hands ; ask our taxpayer,—income-tax espe- cially; ask the ship-owner, with his argosies floating home by every track upon the charts ; ask the owner of lands ill our colo- nies; ask the merchant whose " estate" is as much in Melbourne, Rio, New York, or St. Petersburg, as it is in London. Ask everybody, but the possible contractor, the infuriate Irish Bishop, or the noble sympathizing speculator in the recovery of Austria and Absolutism. But we know that we, even though victorious, —even though we could drive the trespasser from our trim garden and our glass-houses,—that we shall come out of the affray with the larger damages ; and Napoleon knows it too. But the know- ledge only makes the wantonness of the folly the more apparent ; and when we goad him with systematic insults, we give him the right to say—" It is no fault of mine !"
Well, be it so ! If in our island self-sufficiency we choose to forget that we can peacefully influence other nations, as we can
other men, only through their own perceptions and sympathies,—if we fall back into an isolation which is barbarism internationally as much as the segregation of the Middle Ages was barbarism nationally,—if we trust to the assurance of popu- lar orators, that the spirit of commerce has fairly established the age of peace, and that free trade, prosperity, and national great- ness will last "for ever,"—we shall only expedite the lessons of which we prove our need. We shall learn that we can guarantee nothing in this world "for ever,"—not free trade, nor peace, nor national greatness, nor the existence of the human race itself. Even in our own life-time, we can reckon upon nothing beyond the tenure of living endeavour. We may indulge the luxury of braving war, on the arrogant assumption of our past successe.s, —again to find that we have to purchase the prize,. which we .did last time at the moderate figure of one thousand millions sterling. But in the process we may be wholesomely taught, that commer- cial greatness is not national greatness, and that no nation tan
forg. t to sustain its moral and active strength without falling into thin mnistful humour which the conscious power of action forbids, for it is the voice of unconscious weakness asking to be corrected. Thus we may regain, from the dominion of luxury and money- mak lug, time and leisure for the restoration of that delight in hardy life, and that spirit of chivalry, 'without which any state is a temptation to its enemies, is worthless to its allies.
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