THE FREN CH RECIPROCITY ILISSFLION SO EN GLAND.
" The French Government has sent M. Martineau to Chesnes, Countillor of
State, to England upon a mission to that which Dr. Bowring has recently fulfilled in France. M. Martineau is, it is said, to make himself acquainted with the whole system of the management of the finances, and of vouching the public expenditure in England. It appears that M. Martineau and Dr. Bowring had frequent interviews during the visit of the latter to France, and that they will examine and discuss together the system of accounts in both countries, so as to improve both from such parts as appear to be superior in each."—Morniog Herald.
The French are determined not to be outdone—we sent them a BOWRING, and they return us a MARTINEAU: this is quite ac- cording to the reciprocity system. Dr. BOWRING was the mis- sionary of a liberal commercial Government to France : Franco has a similar Government, and if it did not put forth a feeler, would fancy that the Alliance looked in the eyes of Europe like a crab with one claw. The gardener that found a boy stealing apples pop- ped him up at a summerhouse-window: finding that this disturbed the equilibrium of his horticultural arrangements, he seized his own boy, fortunately a pendant to the little robber, and fixed him at the corresponding window opposite. This was for the sake of symmetry. It must be for the sake 'of some principle of taste that M. MARTINEAU has been sent over. Sure we arc, that our mode of keeping the public accounts will instruct no one in any thing but the tenacity with which we adhere to venerable barbarism. The great object of Dr. Bowiti NG, in his itineraries, was to undeceive the French People as to the value of monopolies, and the absurdity of excluding cheap foreign productions in order to manufacture dear and bad ones at home. In this mission, we believe, he had great success. But the state of public opinion here is different : the People want no missionary—they knew it all before. Unless M. MARTINEAU is to make the tour of the Lords and the more influential Tories, he will return re infecta. And as little will be his success among them. lie has probably brought arguments for the head, but it is the pocket that wants convincing here—the pocket, not of the people, but the private purse of a class. Who wants information on the Corn-laws ?—and yet the abuse exists. Public opinion is stronger in France than in this country, but it is better-informed here than there. If the whole of France knew of such an abuse as the Corn-laws existing among them, it could not last a session. Here we are, thoroughly well-informed of it, and we are almost impotent to move so much as a discussion upon whether it ought to be removed!
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