FRENCH OFINIONS.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3459, 26 January 1880, Page 3

FRENCH OFINIONS.

England has of late been honored with an unusual amount of attention on the part of the Parisian journalists, and there is no sign of their seeking fresh fields. As to Mr Gladstone's speech, the Monde asks why, if he is right, he requires such avalanches of words' to prove it, and remarks that by his retrospective reftections he treats Lord Hattington and Lord Granville like little boys. The Temps is reminded by Mr Gladstone's one hour and-tbree-qaarters' speech of the fate of Eutychus; but inasmuch as it is the Euglish custom and nobody dies of it, nobody can find fault. The speech would figure honourably in an oratoricnl anthology alongside the best passages of Burke and Fox. The Temps, however, holds that Mr Gladstone's own description of England condemns his cavilling policy. Whether or not England can permanently bear the obligation cast on her, whether or not 33 millions can stand the more or less direct burden of the interest of a quarter of mankind, she can now choose only between the Cobden and Bright policy, which would retain merely her commercial relations and the privileges

of'her insular position, and the policy of 4batham, Pitt, and Canning, the flag and raditions of which Lord Beacopsfield, though with a. little 100 rnnch artifice and charlatanism, has re-erected and resumed. The Temps also thinks that Mr Gladstone, belonging to a time when but two sharplydivided parties existed, does not take account of the increasing number of people who examine and juHge for them■elves.