THE PRESS.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S REPORTED ABANDONMENT OF THE PRESS PROSECUTIONS.
GLOBE—A minister must always lose somewhat of dignity when he descends into a court of law to measure weapons with a political writer; nor does the power of using a much longer weapon than his adversary's add much to the dig- nity of the contest, or render it more his interest to engage in it. A court of law is not the tribunal before which the merits of a Government can be tried; and we can hardly conceive a case in which a Minister, as such, whether good or bad, could derive the smallest advantage from the result of a prosecution for an attack on his public character. If the attack were unjust, a good Government would never want able vindicators, and the wrong done by one portion of the press would be corrected by another : if is were well founded, nothing would be established in point of fact, nor would a bad Minister gain anything in public opinion by a verdict in a criminal prosecution. If, as in the cases lately selected for ex-officio informations and indictments, the imputations on the public character of the Minister were so ex- travagant as to need no refutation, and scarcely to excite any portion of the public attention, this, we conceive, is an attack which least of all requires to be encountered by the strong arm of the law. Is a Minister, then, to submit to all the insult and obloquy that may be heaped upon his character, and because he occupies the highest political station in the country, to abstain front seeking the redress to whice the humblest functionary is by law entitled ? The law undoubtedly throws a broad shield over the character and even the feelings of public functionaries; but pru- dence, as well as magnanimity, suggests the expediency of forbearance, and the privilege of inveighing against Ministers has, with a few exceptions which prove the wisdom of the rule, been, from the period of the Revolution, very freely con- ceded and exercised. The most effectual mode of dealing with unmeasured in- vective, is to disregard it ; and a ntagniloquent declaimer is never so success- fully put down as when he is quietly suffered to exhaust himself in declamation. There is no rule of conduct which a Government can adopt towards public wri- ters, so safe as the general principle of forbearance; for if it is attempted to fix the limits within which political discussion may be allowed, and beyond which it ought to be restrained, the measure of these limits may from time to time become matter of great uncertainty. A Minister may be too irritable, or an Attorney- General too atrabilious, and the Government may improvidently deprive itself of the benefit which it seldom fails to derive from allowinec' free scope to the exer- cise of vituperation. lf, however, a limit must needs be fixed at which the tole-
ration of a scurrilous declamation should cease, let it be when some assignable in- jury has been done by the declaimer.
TRADE OF THE LEVANT AND MEDITERRANEAN.
TIMES—As a natural consequence of the re-establishment of peace in the East the French commercial and shipping interests on the coast of the Mediterranean is taught to expect an immediate increase of business and of profits. 'faking opportunity by the forelock, M. Beugnot, the President of the Board of Trade and Colonies, has apprized the merchants of Marseilles, that "a siegular activity has been given in England to commercial enterprises destined for the Levant, by the announcement of the armistice (or peace as he might now call it), speculators imagining that the long interruption of the habitual communication with Europe must have exhausted the stocks existing in the Turkish magazines at the com- mencement of the war." The French Minister of Trade therefore reminds his countrymen, that they ought to be on the alert,—that they ought to start fair in this new career of prosperous adventure, and to take advantage of all circum- stances of position and vicinity in their favour. This advice is, no doubt, very good; but if the traffic which M. Beugnot thus points out to the enterprise of the people of Marseilles present such a promising aspect of success, his notice and warning was only a piece of goodnatured officiousness. Neither the traders of France or England require to be told where they are likely to drive a good bar- gain, especially if the market be (as in this case) within the sphere of their previous transactions, and if the political intelligence on which the security of their speculations depends be easily accessible. The preparation, of consignments for Turkey in the port of London was likely to be known as soon by the traders of Marseilles as by the official boards of Paris, and certainly would have been. acted upon, though no Minister of Commerce and Colonies had existed. The fact, however, is important, though it required no Minister of state to discover it, that the settlement of the Greek question, and the restoration of peace between Russia and Turkey, must give a new impulse and a more extended range to the trade of the Levant. The war of the Greek revolution has now lasted nearly nine years. During that period commercial intercourse has not only been diminished with the insurgent provinces, but exposed to difficulties and interruptions in the other ports of European Turkey and the western shores of Asia Minor. Piracy prevailed to an alarming extent before the treaty of intervention, and the arrival of the allied squadrons in the Archipelago, and since that time the system of blockades, has proved as injurious to trade as bucaniering was before. Ire addition to this source of commercial discouragement, it must be recollected that many of the markets to which we had been accustomed to resort before the com- mencement of the insurrection, were actually shut up by the confusion and anarchy which it occasioned. That the coasting trade of the Levant and the Mediterranean was extremely active and profitable before 1821, may be inferred (though we had not more positive facts on the subject) from the sudden growth in wealth and prosperity of the small Greek islands of Hydra, Spezzia, and Ispara, which, though nearly barren rocks, maintained, by this trade, -a population of about fifty thousand, and had more than two hundred ships at sea. A consider- able share of this trade will naturally return to the French ports, and England will not be behind in asserting her just proportion. With peace in the Levant, and a free government affording security to property and protection to industry in Greece, an extent of trade may be expected which has not beeu known in these regions for the last three centuries,
Previous page
