We learnt from the Reuter's telegram of London, the 20th instant, that Mr. J. Chamberlain told his audience at Wolverhampton that one source of irritation with France had been removed by the withdrawal of the French claim for the extension of their Settlenient at Shanghai. It is obvious from this that we were right in saying the other day that a much greater importance than they merit has been given at home to our Settlement Extension perplexities. If, as some assert, Lord Salisbury has made up his mind that conflict with France is inevitable, that if it must come sooner or later the sooner it comes the better for us, and that therefore everything France does that touches us is to be magnified into an intentional provocation, we have nothing more to say. Lord Salisbury must, as the old countryman in' Punch said the other day, know better than we do what the hidden dangers to peace in Europe are; but we notice that in addressing; the members of the Constitutional Club in December last, his Lordship said that "it would be much better if some of the politicians who had lately spoken upon. the foreign relations of their country possessed a keener appreciation of the value of silence." A war between England and France would be a crime against civilisation and humanity; circumstances might possibly make it inevitable; but. that Lord' Salisbury would intentionally and of sot purpose provoke France into declaring it we find it very difficult to believe. The tone in which the leading Paris paper, the Temps, writes of the inevitable British protectorate of Egypt shows that the cooler heads in France do not want war with England.
Taking the question of the French claim for the extension of their Settlement at Shanghai on its merits, we find nothing to withdraw of what we wrote in these columns on the Sth instant. It is, and should have been treated as, a local not a political question, We objected as strongly as any. one to the French claim when was stated to include the Chinese Bund, the territory all round the native city, and a piece on the Pootung side, but the French Consul-General may fairly explain that in dealing with Chinese it is good policy to ask a good deal more than will ultimately be contented with. When the claim is ed to Pahsienjao and its repeat what we said on the 5th instant; that "if no more practical injury is done to the general interests in the future than in the past by the French extending their Regulations ito the Pahsienjao district, it may be really worth while to allow this rather than to permit the extension of the cosmopolitan Settlement to be impeded by our objections." We fear that Lord Charles Beresford, with the best intentions in the world, made a mistake when, by the advice he gave the Viceroy Liu at Nanking, Toco into a political question, the re-he practically converted this from a
sult being that the French Consul-General broke off his negotiations, a step which Mr. Chamberlain, who evidently is not clearly informed about a subject which is not properly in his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.