SIX LETTERS TO LORD DURHAM, BY 0. P. Q.

LETTER L

TO THE EARL OF DURHAM.

Paris, 5th November 1834.

MY LORD—I am not in the habit of paying compliments, and above all, of paying compliments to public men in a public manner,—first, because few actions of public men merit approbation ; and second, be- cause compliments are generally taken in the letter and not in the spirit ; and a compliment paid by a public writer to a public eh iractt

is often afterwards brought turnald its..sauxigleuee af c.ontraelieticur.ou his part, should he subsequently blame the acts of the individual he has formerly applauded. The Times has of late supplied a striking ex-

ample of the accuracy of this observation. It complimented HENRY BROUGHAM, and sustained him when HENRY BROUGHAM devoted the

energies of his mind arid the force of his talents and acquirements to

the cause of the People; and it attacked Lord BROUGHAM, when, mindless of his origin, he sought the applause of the Aristocracy iii,

stead of the Democracy of the country, and opposed instead of assisted the progress of Reform. This web most rational and consistent : and yet the Times has been censured. Thus, public writers are cautioned to be sparing in their compliments, and to withhold praise rather than bestow it. Still, my Lord, I will tell you frankly, that your speech, or rather speeches, at the festival given to your Lordship at Glasgow on the 9.9th October, have made a profound impression in France ; and will lead to results both immediately and remotely important. We are not accustomed in France to behold our landed proprietors and our aristocracy come forward voluntarily to take upon themselves either the burdens of office or to support the scrutiny of assembled thousands of the working classes. Such days may come, but we know nothing of them at present. We are of such scenes never spectators at home, but only in Great Britain; and we envy your feelings of satis- faction when Mr. 'FAIT read the Trades address on the Green, sur- rounded by one hundred and twenty thousand witnesses. The pro- ceedings of that day have thrown the French Ministry into a state of irritation and anger, which you can well understand, and will know how to appreciate. In telling the People of Glasgow, "that on such a subject the French People could expect nothing from the French Go- vernment, nor indeed from the French Chamber of Deputies, a large proportion of the members of which are proprietors of monopolies," you "hit the right nail on the head ; " and it has pierced through the bones and marrow of our heartless and disappointed Doctrinaires. The " galled jade " has winced, but " our withers are unwrung ! " Yes, it is true " that the People of France will not long endure a system so injurious to their real interests." Yes, it is true—though the Journal

des Debuts has, by order of M. Tittmts, M. GUIZOT, and M. BERTIN DE VAUX, undertaken to deny it—it is true, " that the whole of the South of France and of the outports have united together to obtain

free trade : " and when Dr. Bowaneo wrote to you, "that such a party will be raised in France in favour of free commercial intercourse, that it will be impossible for the Government to continue the present sys- tem and to plunder the People of France as it had done," he under- stated instead of overstated the facts of the case. The Journal des Dibats has been instructed to deny the truth of this assertion ; but we

have volumes of proofs and thousands of witnesses to substantiate its accuracy. The Journal des Deficits tells us, that the danger of instil-- reetion is not on the part of the merchants and commercial interests.— the wine, oil, and brandy growers — but that the workmen who labour in the manufactories of the North are the men who are much more likely to insurrectionize than the Bordelais or Gi- rondists. This language, on the part of the Ministerial print, is in itself insurrectionary. It is purposely intended to be so. The Government is labouring with all its might to get up excitement in the North against excitement in the South; and that prince of Juste Milieu Prefects the Baron MECHIN, of Lisle, who would have arrested without hesitation any workmen who had dared in spite of the Associ- ations Suppression Law to discuss and petition relative to their own interests, has received " with pleasure "—" with emotion "—" with gratitude "—" with consideration "—the poor deluded men who peti- tioned against the substitution of duties for prohibition, because prohi- bition was most beneficial to their masters, who are manufacturers, and therefore to themselves. And remember, my Lord, that this very Baron MECHIN is the PREFECT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE NORTH, in which are situate the manufactories of the most rampant and furious opponents of free trade. Thus the Government, by its own journal, and by its own agents, is actively engaged in endeavouring to excite the working classes in the manufacturing. districts to cry " No Free Trade !" " Prohibitions for ever !" "Down with the alliance of France and England!" You were right, then, my Lord, when you told the men of Glasgow, that "on such a subject the French People could expect nothing from the French Government." For this declaration, you have been attacked as an imprudent man—a mistaken man—an ill- informed man—and above all, as wanting the qualifications of a states- man. You are told, by the official organ of the Doctrinaires, that you are as ignorant of France as they admit themselves to be of Great Britain ; and that you can know nothing of the middling classes, since the middling classes are composed of manufacturers, and are opposed to commercial freedom. One of the objects of the Debats in writing these diatribes, has been to discredit Dr. BOWRING—diminish the in- fluence he has gained in France—throw a doubt over the accuracy of his statements, and destroy the good opinion entertained of him by all the enlightened classes of this country. Wherever Dr. BOWRING has proceeded, he has been followed by spies and informers ; his conduct has been watched with jealousy ; and his intentions falsely represented. He is known to be in correspondence with your Lordship. He is known to enjoy your confidence, and partake your general opinions. Destroy the chief, and the agent will be destroyed also. This is the policy of the Doctrinaires. So they hold you up to France as an over wealthy and avaricious mine-owner, who wants to ruin French interests in order to aggrandize himself, and who gives out that all which is necessary to secure a good understanding between France and England is that Lambton coals may be exchanged for Bordeaux wine. There is then, my Lord, open war between your Lordship and the French Doctrinaires : and as you, whom they call "a monopolist," will consent to the destruction of your" monopoly," you are of course ill qualified to become a Minister of Great Britain, to which post the Debate assures us you aspire. Against yourself, then, and BOWRING, war is declared by TRIERS and DnenarEL—by the mine proprietors and French manufacturers ; and one of their first objects is cover your name with opprobium in the official organ of their party.

The Journal des Debats is kind enough to tell us, that a "political alliance" is not a "commercial alliance ;" and that the one may exist, as it has existed, without the other. A political alliance, it says, is a

great motalalliauea.mads. £a4haiawtast of lilsosssi4md.eivilieation ; fa,t a commercial alliance is merely an arningement made between great merchants ! The one gives coals, and the other gives wine ; and this is wholly irrespective of any sort of political or moral union. This is the Debuts' definition of a commercial intercourse between the two nations. It represents that alliance as sordid, as secondary, and as in. dependent of the great object we ought all to have in view,—viz. the progress of civilization. Now, really I am at a loss to understand this doctrine of commerce being independent of civilization. I do not profess to be a better financier than M. DUCHATEL, or a more accurate historian than the learned M. Gerzor ; but if I know any thing of the history of the world, the history of commerce is the history of civilization ; and in proportion as men and nutions become truly eivi.

, lied, so do their relations with other countries extend, and brunch out

into various ramifications. If I were to turn to those countries which are to-day most distinguished for their commercial prosperity and commercial activity, I should not certainly turn to those countries where demi-barbarism still exists, but where knowledge and civilization have made the most progress : and even were I to have thrown in my teeth the fact, that some countries, still governed by absolute monarchical institutions, are commercially prosperous, I should be able to show that they are only so to a very small degree when compared with England, Holland, and the United States of America ; and that the decadence ' of commerce in Spain and Portugal is most indubitably to be traced to the non-progress of civilization. It is, then, not true, that the vast ' question now under discussion throughout the whole of France, of her commercial relations with Great Britain, is, a mere narrow, selfish, sordid, money-getting and bartering question, set on foot by a few ' interested monopolists, who wish to sell more of their produce than they have ever yet sold, and therefore wish to find out foreign markets merely to fill their own pockets and ruin their nearest neighbours. This is the mere assertion of a Doctrinaire journal ; and let all the obloquy which will follow such a falsehood rest on the heads of those who have made it. The Debuts says, that the consumer would not profit, but only the grower; and more than hints, that your Lordship and the Glasgow merchants have acted purely from selfish motives. Of the unfairness of thus conducting a political controversy, I say nothing,—for what but unfairness can be expected from such oppo- nents : but I must protest against the ill grace with which such a charge comes from the Doctrinaires and their agents, who are notorious for having all their system of politics centred in the one maxim of " Get nioney, man—honestly if you can, but above all, get money." It surely can be no crime, in the eyes of the proprietors of coal-mines and of forests in France, themselves Ministers, that proprietors in England should desire to sell the produce of their mines and woods, when these Doctrinaire Ministers in France go to the length of voting in the Chambers of Deputies and Peers against all measures tending to sup- ply the people with cheap fuel and cheap comforts. That word "sordid" should never have escaped as a term of reproach from the lips of men whose whole policy consists in working the telegraph to their own profit, and reaping large benefits at the Paris Stock Exchange. You may then, my Lord, return to the Doctrinaires their calumny and their insult ; and ask them, before they impute selfish and sordid motives to others, to write a history of their transactions at the Bourse, from the pretended death of FERDINAND the Seventh in the first place, to his real death in the second, and from that period to the day at which I am addressing you.

But the Debats tells us, that Great Britain grew commercially great, and great also as a manufacturing nation, by means of prohibitions! This is a new version of an old tale. That Great Britain is both com- mercially and inanufacturingly great is certain ; and that her system was prohibitive, I am well aware. But it would be as easy to prove that" Tenterden Steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands," or that "a horse chesnut is a chesnut horse," as to prove that the commercial and manufacturing greatness of England are to be attributed to the prohibitive system so long adopted in your country. No—instead of saying as the Deltas does, that Great Britain became so great "by means of the prohibitive system," read, "in spite of the prohibitive system." How much greater she would have been had that system not been pursued, we may imagine from the results already attained from even its partial change. And it is not a little astonishing, that the Debats, which has all of a sudden become so anxious about the spread of civilization, should have lost sight of the fact, that the com- forts of material or animal life are proofs or evidences of that very progress ; and that as man emerges from a state of nature and barba- rism, and becomes social and civilized, he surrounds himself not with merely the necessities but even with the luxuries of life.

And the Doctrinaires say what is false—and what they must know to be false—when they represent your system as inimical to a political and a moral alliance between the two nations. No man in his senses will believe that a Frenchman prefers a bad razor to a good one—one solitary French dish, because so dear, to a dozen of English dishes be- cause cheap—or that he will prefer paying one franc for a coal fire, in- stead a eight sons: and on the other hand, no one in his senses will believe that the English people will be morally and politically severed from the French people, because real champagne wine shall be sold in London at three shillings and sixpence the bottle, good brandy for half- a-crown, and handsome Lyons silks at half their present prices.

My letter of to.day, is, as your Lordship will perceive, an introduc- tion to those which I am about to address to you on this subject—on the whole trade question between this country and Great Britain, and on the commercial inquest now prosecuted in France. In those letters I shall present you with facts, documents, and exposures, which shall lay bare the whole system and artifices of the Doctrinaires; and which will, I hope, tend to strengthen your Lordship in your best efforts to promote the frank and sincere alliance of the two Nations.

I am, my Lord, your obedient ser.vant, 0. P. Q. P. S. I am happy to inform your Lordship, that the Journal des Di- bats of this morning apprizes us that TIIIERS, GUIZOT, HUESANN, DUCHATEL, and DE RIGNY, have resigned their posts as Ministers. PERSIL and JACOB alone remain ; but for bow long, is wholly uncer- tain. Let us hope that their successors will better understand the rn terests of both England and France, and the nature of the alliance-

- which is so much to be desired.