mmerce, China will for many years
preserve her internal laws, her eccentric tastes, her inveterate
habits. China is the country of routine and immovability. The treaty
with Great Britain cannot modify the nature of China in a few months.
_If the English are not prudent in their exports, if they overload the
newly opened ports with foreign produce, they will injure themselves
more than they were injured by the war just concluded._" In every word
of this we concur: but alas! what weight will such considerations have
with the agitating manufacturers in the north of England? Their fierce
but short-sighted anxiety to make rapid fortunes, will make most of
them, in a very few years, melancholy evidences of the justness of our
observations! We cannot pass from the East without noticing the sound
statesmanship which is regulating all Lord Ellenborough's leading
movements in India--a matter now universally admitted. How unspeakably
contemptible and ridiculous has the lapse of a few months rendered the
petty clamours against him, with which the ex-ministerial party
commenced their last year's campaign! Without, however, travelling
round the entire circle of our foreign connexions and
operations--there are one or two points to which we will briefly
refer, as striking instances of the vigilant and indefatigable energy,
and the powerful diplomatic influence of Lord Aberdeen, especially
with reference to the securing commercial advantages to this
country--and which has extorted the following testimony, during the
present month (December,) from another French journal, by no means
favourably disposed to this country:--"The English Government is
incontestably the best served of all Governments in the means of
obtaining new, and extending old markets, and in the rapid and
complete knowledge of the course to be adopted to ensure the sale of
the immense products of Great Britain in different parts of the
globe." Take for instance the case of Russia. We have actually
succeeded in wringing from the tenacious and inflexible Cabinet of St
Petersburg an important commercial advantage! On Lord Aberdeen's
accession to office, he found Russia in the act of aiming a fatal
blow at a very important branch of our shipping trade, by levying a
differential duty on all British vessels conveying to Russian ports
any goods which were not the produce of the British dominions. After,
however, a skilful and very arduous negotiation, our foreign secretary
has