There has been another "unpleasant affair" at Tahiti. No- body
has been slaughtered; but an English Lieutenant, who did not understand French, was asked where he was going to when he landed—was forced to show himself to a French sea-captain, made to surrender his sword, and detained three hours. They say that he demanded an apology, which was refused. Perhaps he could only speak the French " of Stratford-atte-Bowe," and was in turn not understood ; for the apology, it appears, was sent after him. Mr. ROSE, however, has hastened from the Antipodes to lay the affair before the Admiralty ; and he arrived just before Louis PHILIPPE. We do not know whether the Lords of the Admiralty made any abridgment in the guns that saluted the vicariously delinquent French Monarch, or curtailed the bunting displayed for-his gratifi- cation at Portsmouth ; or whether they, making "disgraceful con- cessions" to France, as certain Opposition papers charge them with doing, allowed the full quantum of gunpowder and bunting, in spite of their guilty knowledge that Mr. ROSE had had a misunder- standing with French sailors, in a vocabulary consisting of French on one side and English on the other, in unparallel columns. Some look upon the arrival of the intelligence as inopportune. Quite the reverse. Louis PHILIPPE and his Foreign Minister are here to see with their own eyes that the English %aye no spark of hostility to the French ; and that Queen VICTORIA, the head of the Navy, is not rudely bent on disparaging French officers. In like manner, we see with our own eyes that the urbane, intelligent, wise, and kind old man at Windsor Castle, is not the moon-struck desperado that he appears to be by his representatives at Tahiti. It seems to be a political necessity with France to have some amount of active silliness at work in offices of responsible trust ; and all of it that can be spared from the staff of the French Opposition papers finds vent in Tahiti. Perhaps the morbid inflammation is as much out of the way there as anywhere ; and if there must be a war between France and England, it would be an ingenious way to carry it on by means of the fighting fools of both countries in Polynesia, the rest of the great peoples remaining at profitable peace in Earope. Joking apart, this is just a case in point, where every friendly intelligence between the masters facilitates a judicious settlement of the silly squabble in the servants' hall.
