CONTINENTAL OMNIUM.
BY A COLLECTOR AT BRUSSELS.•
Bruxelles, July 26, 1330. AT this moment seven journals are being prosecuted for libel in the Pays Bas, under a law which passed only the 26th of June : thirty articles are incriminated, making an article a day : this is 'called in the country a crusade against the press. The composi- tors, and even the apprentices, are summoned to appear, and are examined as to the authors of different articles. This would be called etnfair at home ; but in truth, England is the land of Fair Play ; and many a loss have we sustained in our contests with the Continent by our honourable love of it. We should hold it as treacherous to examine confidential servants with respect to .their master's opinion or writings, as we should to scatter poison through the streets to cut off unwary dogs: Both are done in the Pays Bas. It was only a few weeks ago that we saw a venerable official rolling a ball of poisoned viands in his hand, and in the act of dropping it before a little dog, which had a claim to the rights of hospitality, for he was a stranger, and only passing through the treacherous municipality. Very shortly after, we were present at an examination of apprentices as to the handwriting of the articles they assisted in printing. This, we said to ourselves, is not the land of Fair Piny, The victims of the Ministeriat prosecutions id. tbis country, the learned M. de Porrea and the rest, are now popularly termed the Banished. Under this name their motions are recorded ; and in their way out of the country their course was hailed by the crowds that flocked to see them. At this moment they are at Vaals, a little village near Aix la-Chapelle, on the frontiers, waiting for a permission to reside in Switzerland : if it is refused, they will re- turn and proceed by way of Ostend to England, the other refuge of Les Bannis Politiques. The condition of this country is curious. Holland and the Netherlands, two countries of wholly different interests, feelings, and inclinations, are tied up together like a couple of curs ; and they that would read their history may see it typified in BURNS'S poem on that subject. Politics run high, and the best means are not taken to allay the tempest. The journals dare not even quote entire the remarks of the French papers on Netherlandish affairs ; and there is no contraband trade so strictly guarded against as the admission of foreign newspapers without being restamped by the Government. The Pays Bas is not, indeed, the only govern- ment which makes a shameful profit upon the introduction of foreign newspapers : on account of the high duty, a Aloniteur costs annually, at St. Petersburg, 348 francs per annum, and the other papers eye francs. The spread of the English newspapers on the Continent is not, however, so much impeded by political motives, as by a Post- office arrangement, which we are surprised the powerful body of nee spaper proprietors have not looked into. Take, for example, a person at Calais—it is nearest home : a subscriber to the Times at Calais can receive it, by means of a friend at Dover, free to the water's edge ; but he cannot get it any nearer to him, whatever may be his opportunities, for the mail-boats will not take a news- paper a step unless it comes direct from the Post-office in London: a subscriber to the Times is, therefore, driven to apply to a Post- office agent in Calais for his newspaper ; this person will insure it to him on the payment of DOUBLE the subscription, at London, in advance ; besides which, the Calais post is to be paid. Now, since newspapers are free to Dover, this double subscription is paid simply for crossing the Channel, a distance of twenty-four miles. The case is similar for the whole of the Continent : were this im- position removed—and it is, very possibly, nothing more than a perquisite of the clerk, and no affair of revenue—we are very con- fident that the circulation of English papers on the Continent would be immediately increased twenty fold. Even extensive societieas and institutions on the Continent, cannot afford to take in so much as one.English newspaper : .one had been taken in, we are told, by " La Haute Societe" at Berne, but was given up on account-of the expense; and in all the large mercantile towns of Frankfort we could only find one (the Times) at ti iereading-room of the merchants. Nowhere is the " Ignorant Present" so devoutly worshipped as at Paris ; consequently, nothing is heard but of Algiers* and the elections. The glorious taking of the Dey in his den divides the hour with the immortal 221—the mystic number of those who voted the address. Magnanimi.heroes ! only to be compared to the ever-to-be-remembered Major KLEBER, who first mounted the breach of Algiers, and cut down the Turk of seven feet high. The facility of appropriation, on the part of the French, has long been notorious : no bon Francais at this moment looks upon Algiers in any other light than a part of France, or at least a Colonie Fmricaise : numerous passports have. already been de- manded by travellers on the part of houses in Rouen for Algiers : it will be made a part of the ordinary route of the Commis-Voya- geur of France.* A pamphlet, discussing the best mode of arail- ing themselves of Black Labour in Algiers has already been pub- lished by a barrister in Paris, of the name of HAUTEYILLE. Camels, moreover, are about to replace oxen in the South of France : it would seem that this plan has long been in agitation, and it is now revived in honour of Algiers ; which, it is suggested, will afford a good supply of breeders at small expense. There has been a camel haras (or breeding ground) at Pisa since 1789 ; and the annuals are said to bear the climate of winter, when they are left to wander among the woods, without suffering. A camel can carry 10 quintals (about 194 cwt.) on its back, and march thirty miles a day: this is the burden of two oxen of the sandy country called the Landes, where they are proposed to be used, and where it is said the experiment has been tried, The conquest of Algiers was strongly recommended to Louis the Fourteenth, when a young man, in a little work which is re- printed in a Recueil des Pieces Curieuses, (Cologne, 1666,)—for the twofold object of ridding the seas of pirates, and of founding a French colony in a fruitful and-pleasant country, well adapted to mercantile views.
The quidnuncs of the Continent talk of war ; but surely you are not so absurd, in your magnanimous country, as shed -blood and treasure, and destroy commerce, because France has done what she had a right to do—smother a nest of hornets, and send the old drone a-packing, with his sting out, to Naples. Of course, the important intelligence has arrived in London, that the carrier pigeons, let fly in the New Road, arrived in good. time at Antwerp—the first in five hours and a half—eighteen the same day, and twenty-six the next morning by dawn.- F. R. was marked upon each ; which the Antwerp paper says means .Fbreign Runner, the English of Coureur Stranger. I. apprehend they are the initials of Frank Robley, the publican.
Yours, • The New Revolution has changed all that. It win. :11= It" Mr. CrExasuss writes ow tie 26:A.—fp.
Previous page
