eception, for its mission is to contend for the
interests, one-sided, exclusive, and egoistical, as they may be, and
establish the supremacy of France--_quand meme_; at whatever resulting
prejudice to Belgium--at whatever total exclusion of Great Britain from
commercial intercourse with, and commercial transit through Belgium,
must inevitably flow from a customs' union, the absolute preliminary
condition of which is to be, that Belgium "shall be ready to do every
thing necessary to place our commerce beyond the reach of invasion by
foreign products." Mr Gladstone may rest assured that the achievement of
this Franco-Belgiac customs' union will still be pursued with all the
indomitable perseverance, the exhaustless and ingenious devices, the
little-scrupulous recources, for which the policy of the Tuileries in
times present does not belie the transmitted traditions of the past. And
it will be achieved, to the signal detriment of British interests, both
commercial and political, unless all the energies and watchfulness of
the distinguished statesmen who preside at the Foreign Office and the
Board of Trade be not unceasingly on the alert.

Other and unmistakeable signs of the spirit of commercial combination,
or confederation, abroad, and more or less explicitly avowed and
directed against this country, are, and have been for some time past,
only too patent, day by day, in most of those continental journals, the
journals of confederated Germany, of France, with some of those of Spain
and of Portugal, which exercise the largest measure of influence upon,
and represent with most authority the voice of, public opinion. Nor are
such demonstrations confined to journalism. _Collaborateurs_, in serial
or monthly publications, are found as earnest auxiliaries in the same
cause--as _redacteurs_ and _redactores_; pamphleteers, like light
irregulars, lead the skirmish in front, whilst the main battle is
brought up with the heavy artillery of _tome_ and works voluminous. Of
these, as of _brochures, filletas_, and journals, we have various
specimens now on our library table. All manner of customs, or commercial
unions, between states are projected, proposed, and discussed, but from
each and all of these proposed unions Great Britain is studiously
isolated and excluded. We have the "Austrian union" planned out and
advocated, comprising, with the hereditary states of that empire,
Moldavia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, as well as th