CONTENTS OF No. V. I. REMARKS ON THE FRENCH QUESTION, 1. Proceedings of the Seventh Anniversary, ADVOCATE OF PEACE. No. V. JUNE, 1835. ARTICLE I. REMARKS ON THE FRENCH QUESTION. BY THE EDITOR. Just as we are putting pen to paper, news has arrived from France, calculated to allay, in many minds, the most painful apprehensions. France aud the United States have, for some months past, been viewing each other somewhat in the manner of combatants entering on the arena which is to be the scene of future encounter. The French government had failed to discharge an acknowledged obligation-an obligation which in substance, though not in form, had been standing about the fourth part of a century. The lawless and unjust acts of war under the French empire as long ago as 1810 and 1811, now in 1835 were about to become the occasion of other acts of depredation and warfare. "Men do not gather grapes of thorns." The fruits of war are not peace and justice, and good will among nations. The United States, impatient of the delay of France, begin to assume an attitude not new in the history of the world, but which, thanks to the Christian religion, little obeyed though it be in its true spirit, and to the progress of society in law, in commerce, and in morals, is every day becoming more uncommon. France, all gallant and chivalrous as she is, must of course assume an attitude in some measure corresponding to our own. It was not to be supposed, that the pride and spirit of the nation would receive the slightest intimation of a menace without some demonstrations of gallantry and chivalry. We most sincerely congratulate, however, the friends of peace and the lovers of the true interests of mankind, that at last a sense of justice has not been entirely unavailing. We wish it were in our power to carry our congratulations further, and to say that a sense of justice has prevailed over all notions of national honor; and that France stands in the eyes of the whole earth, an example of a nation determined to regard the naked obligations of justice, at all events, compatible with chivalry and gallantry or not. We shall The French question, as it is termed, furnishes a most appropriate topic for the comments of a journal devoted to illustrating and diffusing the principles of a pacific policy. The occasion is one of those occasions which seem to invest abstract principles with body and with form, and to present them to the eyes of the multitude as living and moving, and exerting their power upon the theatre of human life and action. accordingly embrace it for our legitimate purposes. With the purely political aspects of the question we have no concern. That is to say, whether the Message of President Jackson, or the Reports of the Committee of the Honorable Senate, or the Reports of the Committee of the Honorable House of Representatives were all, or either of them, as parts of the system now pursued, judicious and worthy of being approved, is a matter foreign to our purposes. Whether by the Constitutional Charter of France, the concurrence of the legislature with the executive department of the government is necessary to render a treaty duly negotiated and solemnly ratified by the only authority specified in that charter as competent to do the same, absolutely binding upon the nation, is another question, which for our purposes we do not deem it necessary to touch. Our concern is not with the measures adopted under the political system which seems to be regarded as the true system, by statesmen of all parties; it is with the system itself. The |