Interesting from France.
We published yesterday morning a short paragraph respecting the return of Prince Napoleon to
France, stating that he had advised the speedy recognition of the Southern Confederacy.
We copy the following extract from a Paris letter, dated Oct. 18, which we find in the New York
Times:
‘
If we may judge of the feeling against the
North among the commercial people of
England, by that manifested by the
English commercial people located at
Paris, it must be terrible indeed.
No slander is too absurd to be told, none too gross to be believed.
Whether from commercial rivalry, from the menacing growth, or from what they call the impertinence of the
Yankee race, we seem to have no friends left in this particular class of the
English people.
Not that they love the
South or slavery, but they are furious at the idea that the
North should even attempt to avert the threatened rupture of the great Republic, and will be still more furious if the
North be successful.
The doctrine of free trade which
England is forcing on all
Europe, and which she has failed to force on the
United States, has turned away the sympathies of the commercial classes from the race to which they allied by blood, and directed them into new and strange channels.
The
Morrill tariff falling upon English commerce at a moment when
France was opening her ports to this same commerce formed a contrast too striking for even English tenacity, and to-day we see the unnatural and unusual spectacle of Frenchmen and Englishmen joining in a common depreciation of
America and her institutions.
Among the least apocryphal of the stories which are repeated here in English and French commercial circles, is one to the effect that the Southern Confederacy has sold to English speculators, at a price so low, for cash in advance, as to render the risk not too great, the cotton the
Confederacy now holds in its hands, and which is to be handed over to the
English owners of it through the first port which the national navy opens.
The Southern Confederacy thus hopes to obtain money to carry on the war indefinitely; but it remains to be seen whether the
National Government will overlook such a fraudulent operation.
It is reported that in the long report which Prince Napoleon has made to the
Emperor and his Cabinet on American affairs, the
Prince, while showing throughout a strong sympathy for the
North and the cause of the
Union, yet expresses the opinion that a subjugation of the
South is impossible, and that, sooner or later, the separation must be recognised as final.
’
