30th Mar.
Tit inconsistency of humanity in the presence of wickedness is proverbial. Too many thoughtless people, otherwise of unimpeachable virtue, "hate the sin but love the pretty sinner," and the instructors of youth too often, while reprobating wickedness in the abstract, enjoin on their charges to admire the energy and skill which the wicked devote to the achievement of their immoral ends. - It is a commonplace to remark of some atrocious criminal who has been laid by the heels, that if he had devoted to honest industry the powers he has wasted in a career of crime, he might have lived a millionaire and died in the odour of sanctity. We all admire success however obtained, and a Napoleon lives in the mouths of men longer than a Captain Coram, We think highly of, while we hate, the man who has bested us; that he was able to best us is a proof that he is something out of the common.
With something, or rather a good deal, of this admiring hatred Prince Henri d'Orléans has been dilating to his countrymen on the persistent wickedness of the representatives of England in the East. No us, perhaps because we are so steeped in the desire to bend all Orientals to our will, our government and its agents do not seem half wicked enough, but Prince Henri, as we learn from a recent number of the Times, cannot say enough about the uneasy, aggressive, and intriguing character of British policy in the East. Perfidious - Albion puts on a treble cloak of perfidy east of the Straits of Malacca. While the French are going quietly about their own business in their own colonies and protectorates, endeavouring to reconstruct in Indo-China the Empire out of which the treacherous Englishmen cheated them in India, the English will not let them alone. "It is true the British agents do not commit avy specific acts of hostility. hat is their preternatural cunning. They know that such acts if committed would be checked. But they look on in @ most aggravating fashion.
An attitude of such hateful suspicion is naturally offensive to the susceptibilities of good Frenchmen." We are rather inclined to think when our "prancing proconsuls," as they have been irreverently called, get the government into difficulties by too much zeal in the way of extending British influence, that Downing Street disapproves of such: pestilent activity, and really prefers as agents men who will draw. their salary regularly, send home an annual report with no contentious matter in it, and never waste dollars in urgent telegrams. But Prince Henri, who has been all over the Far East-and seen for himself, knows better. It is the ambitious, unscrupulous, and sagacious government at home" that is always egging on its agents abroad. "They are told fo do all they can, to go everywhere, to court the chiefs, to plunge into native intrigues, to disparage to the natives the courage of the French administration, and to make ready the way by every means that greed and cunning can suggest for the extension of the Empire." Meanwhile, the French Republic discourages its agents and neglects its opportunities, and leaves its exiled sous to pine in helpless disgust, "while their rights are infringed, their territories encroached upon, and their flag—the flag of France—treated with scant respect." Can it be that the chance of hitting the Republic on the way encourages this Orleans Prince to aim so many stones across the Channel? How curious it is that both France and Russia should describe us as the incessant disturbers of the peace in Asia, while we believe ourselves to be. the most quietly-disposed people in the world, only roused with difficulty when defence against the incursions of France and Russia becomes imperative.
The question to which the Prince particularly refers is the claim of the French to make the Meikong the western boundary of their Indo-Chinese possessions. 'I'he opposition to this, however, does not come from us at all, but from Siam, but the French unfortunately believe, or say they believe, that we are backing up Siam in this opposition. How can it matter to England whether France or Siam holds the—very nominal—protectorate over the tribes east of the Meikong, the country which the Siam Free Press calls "this desolate and undeveloped region, where the one thing conspicuous is the absence of any open and effective' control?" We can fully sympathise with France in her desire to get her frontier settled, for nothing renders the maintenance of peace and order more difficult in an Oriental possession than the existence of a no-man's land adjoining it, where the tribes harry the country on either side of them according as they are disposed for the moment, and when either of the contiguous established authorities proposes to chastise them, claim the protection of the other. It appears to be believed that Siam is asking Great Britain as her true friend to help her against French aggression. But Siam is like other Oriental nations; she will wake every kind of appeal and every kind of promise when she is in trouble, and throw her true friend over altogether the moment the trouble is past. From what we know at present, Lord Rosebery will make a great mistake if he jets the Siamese think that we shall interfere in any way in this dispute with France. The extension that France asks can do us no harm, and the imposing of a civilised rule over savage tribes is an advantage to the world in itself. Asa writer in the Siam Free Press. says:—'No diplomacy on the part of the Siamese can interfere with the French action or prevent them from carrying out their intentions., Siam has, then, to drive the best bargain she can, Let the French demarcate the frontier they -claim, and let: Siam acquiesce promptly and definitely. Let Siam rather encourage the French to take what they require now, than have them claiming more hereafter. The right to the left bank of the Meikong is based on shadowy grounds both by Siamese and French, and it appears fitting that Siam should give way to a neighbour who is better able to administer the disputed country, These lands have never been of any use to Siam, and it is to be doubted if the French will find them more profitable." We should, at any rate, leave France and Siam to settle the matter between them without our interference, and show that there is not so much foundation after all for Prince Henri's assertions about our ubiquitous meddlesomeness.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.