21 FEBRUARY 1846, Page 14

FRANCE.: THE WAR-FACTION OF THE SALONS. ENGLAND has been treated-

with wonderful forbearance by the French War party since the opening of the Chambers. No sena* tonal thunders have yet been awakened by the perfidious amble tion of England. Nay, this serene weather may outlast the session. With the exception of one or two dreamy Royalists of the old school, the French Parliamentary declaimers against

England have really no to us. The English rarely come in contact with the middle and lower classes of France, but there are no foreigners with whom the politically powerful class of England have more intimate relations or less imperfect sympa- thies than with the members of the literary and political circles of Paris. French men of science and French politicians have more topics and pursuits in common with the same classes in England than any other people—except, perhaps, the Americans, who are English. The systematic attacks upon England in the French, Chambers and the political press have been insincere—a mere trick of party. M. Thiers would have been astonished had he found on his visit to London that his tirades had been under- stood literally and resented. To the educated Frenchman society is a necessary of existence; and the admixture of an English element has become indispensable to relieve the sameness of the indigenous circles. During a- war with England, the agg-se- gate haunters of Parisian salons would be as miserable as Madame de Steel during her exile. The very parties who have all but provoked a war would be the first to cla- mour for peace. That they (with the able assistance of Lord Palmerston) have not set the two nations together by the ears, is mainly owing to the sound practical sense of that portion of the French nation with whom Englishmen come least in con- tact. The industrial interests, who have little, acquaintances with

Englishmen and less sympathy for them, but hate war by a pro- fessional instinct, have grown strong in the provinces ; and they have supported the peace-loving King and his Minister. Had the industry of Havre, Rouen, Nantes, Lyons, Miilhausen, and other centres of French manufactures and commerce, been less advanced than it is, the diatribes of the tribune, acting upon the naturally excitable temperament of Frenchmen, would have ren- dered the maintenance of peace impossible. The recklessness of the Liberal War orators is most culpable; but to Englishmen there is something more revolting still in the smooth insincerity with which they expect to be allowed to abuse us in the Cham- bers and the press, and yet admitted to unreserved friendly inter- course. The bigotry of Legitimists—their traditionary aversion to England, as the country which their earlier Revolutionists professed to take for a model, and which while it afforded them an asylum and fought their King's battles would not restore the old despotism or gratify their personal revenge—commands at least the respect we tiny to sincere and earnest intellectual weak- ness. But the utter destitution of the sentiment of truthfulness and self-respect evinced by the Liberal Opposition is contempt- ible.