SUICIDE OF FRANCE BY HER OWN JOURNALS.
AT last the Paris press appears to be awake to the impolicy of the attacks upon England. Professedly they were in retaliation, but they were in their nature the kind of revenge which consists in cutting off one's nose to spite one's face." • The excuse was, that journals in this country had circulated calumnies against some person or persons, unnamed, in France ; and because ill- conditioned writers in our perfectly free press gave vent to bad feeling or gossip, leading representatives of the French Govern- ment in the press set themselves to work to damage the alliance. The official Moniteur gave its sanction by joining: in this so-called retaliation : the Constitutionnel imparted the full colour, taking not the press alone, but the English Government—" England," whom it associated with Austria in " arrogant pretensions "' and " intererested connivances." And the "issemblee Nationale now comes out with a direct attack upon the alliance between France and England. Thus— " The English alliance will never lead us to forget that, at an epoch which is not very remote,. in the reign of Louis XVI, the united fleets of France. and Spain were mistresses of the Channel, and blockaded the English in their own ports. And, as it is not the destiny of states to conclude eternal alliances, and as events which cannot be anticipated by human wisdom may
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produce in the future combinations that have been witnessed in the east, such as a war between France and her neighbours beyond the Channel; we express our hopes that, in this contingency, the French navy. would be en- abled, with the assistance of an ally, were that ally even Russia, to counter balance the power of Great Britain on the sea."
The official Moniteur complained that certain personal attacks in English journals endangered the alliance ; but here is a French journal, issued under a censorship and thus negatively at least cum auctoritate et privilegio," directly attacking the alliance and labouring to overthrow it, while contemplating another hos- tile alliance to make war upon England!
We leave the French Emperor, and Frenchmen generally, to consider which gains the most by the alliance, Constitutional England or Imperial France.
Journalism managed from the centre does not answer. This has been found out even in Paris. The Gazette de France ad.. mite that "the regime adopted with regard to the press does not in practice produce the advantage expected by those who esta- blished it." The Siecle points to " the thousand rumours circulating in Paris—false news, epigrams, and insinuations against the French Government "—circulating by favour of the suppression. We have such things in this country. Throughout the general body of the press, every functionary in France, " from the sum- mit to the base, even down to the humblest garde champetre," is " treated with extreme respect and consideration "—so the As- semblee admits; and if, nevertheless, there are exceptions, we have also in English journals systematic attacks upon our own Court, and positive statements, with elaborate circumstantial evidence to prove Lord Palmerston a " traitor." Suppress these things, pre- vent a free press and public meeting, and who could have furnished the universal contradiction ? who could have told that all England, Manchester included, is with Lord Palmerston, so that the con- templated exhibition on Tower Hill has been indefinitely post- poned ? Suppress these things and they would permeate the whole of society as murmurs unchecked. We should be told, in hoarse but awful whispers, of the giant lurking in the cellar, that was some day to rise up and break the Castle of Otranto to pieces. We have out our giants from the cellar, and they prove to be nothing better than rats and mice, slugs and black beetles, and such small deer. There is nothing for suppressing calumny and sedition like good open public opinion, which destroys them as the wind destroys nasty vapours.
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