The events and comments of the week have bryight 'forth
all the importance of the remarkable address deliver6Vby the Count de Morny to a provincial council. Without any circumlocution, the Count employs the platform of the local body over which he presides to deliver a pointblank address to England in correction of popular mistakes on the subject of the Emperor's policy. He explains to our journals and public, that if the French press has expressed some bitterness against this country, that press is kept under no restraint by the French Government, and in a certain sense this statement is the literal truth. The spirit of the two countries is so unlike, that we English mis-trapilate expressions and proceedings which would undoubtedly bear a totally different signification if they occurred in this country. The control main- tained by the French Government over the press only takes place after the fact, and may be described as exercised exclusively, or almost exclusively, for internal purposes—the safety and smooth- working of the Government. The Count undertakes to correct misconceptions as to the desire of the Emperor to avenge Waterloo and St. Helena, and to form some conspiracy with Russia or Austria, or both, against England ; the commentator not only pointing to many public facts with which our own readers are sufficiently familiar, but distinctly stating the instructions which he bore as Ambassador to St. Petersburg,—that he should suffer no attack to be made upon the English alliance. There is, he says, but one kind of attack which France will make upon Eng- land, and that is an ardent competition with us in commerce and industry. This must be regarded as a distinct appeal by the statesmanship which surrounds the Emperor, and which is in- spired by his wishes, to the practical sense of the English com- munity. There are several circumstances which corroborate the declaration of the Count de Morny. We refer not only to the sincerity of the course which the Emperor Napoleon has adopted in Italy, notwithstanding inevitable changes of circumstances, but even more to the measures recently taken in France for a re- duction of her armed force, and yet more again to many circum- stances which contribute to prove that the Imperial Government is taking steps to fulfil the intention which it declared some time back of reconsidering and improving the tariff and com- mercial system of France. The Amnesty was a recent earnest of the spirit in which the Emperor was preparing to reconsider the domestic condition of his country ; and the speech of the Count de Monty is remarkable, not only for its complete accordance with the assurances given a year or two back to M. Michel Che- valier, but also for the undisguised manner in which the Imperial Government begs the candid consideration of the English com- munity.
