Show OUR FRENCH LETTER Special correspondence of the HERALD PARIS May 231883 Robinson Crusoe with all his art could not make a wheelbarrow The French with all their qualifications qualifica-tions cannot oe a colonial power because they are not a colonizing people France has no redundant population to hire off to distant lands She held the Canadas up to the battle of Abraham a period of 150 years and during that epoch the mother country contributed only 12000 emigrantswhieh by a strange coincidence corresponded with the total of the two armies commanded by Wolfe and Montcalm However Voltaire consoled his countrymen by the assurance that the Canadas represented but a few roods of snow France may be said to have sold the basin of the Mississippi for a song She has no colonies in the English acceptation of the wordbranches of the mother country The only illustration of such in miniature ia a settlement in the Rio Plata inhabited in-habited by emigrants from the Basque provinces and fed by occasional occa-sional dribblets from Vaterland In possession of Algeria since fifty three years that splendid region is not peopled by more than 300 000 home Frenchmen even its fundamental fun-damental form of goverement is still under discussion Only 500 Mussulmans since 1866 have demanded de-manded to be naturalized that which subjects them to be taxed like born citizens while not being exempted from the imposts levied on the native Arabs The colonies of French are at best only military possessions where no selfgovern ment is recognized where Frenchmen French-men have comptoirs but no abiding city M Renard has lately affirmed that the only means to increase the relative stationary population France is to found colonies which will force men when there to marry and have families Now the knot of the difficulty is precisely the when there to induce the French to emigrate to their own colonies they prefer to concentrate at home to immigrate to the large cities Who ever heard of a French emigrant emi-grant ship Independent of the absence of a surplus population the law which compels the property of a parent to be equally divided among his children irrespective of their worth dulls all incentive on the part of young people to seek their fortune in any new or happy land They settle down at home contentei wi littlebut never cantie wi mair England has a population of thir tyfour millions besides ten millions of nativeborn subjects in her colonies colo-nies and possessions and still she is not continental power NowFrance has a population of 36000000 and cries to be a great home and a grea colonial power This end is more than ever unrealizable in the present pre-sent history of the world She lost all her colonial possessions during the Napoleonic wars and every new take to satisfy her present earth hunger must be a sQurce of weakness weak-ness for her European position Even when she opens up a country of her own there are other nations generally the English and Germans who monopolize her carrying trade and markets Algeria and Cochin China to wit And the same causes which beat them out of their own markets exclude them elsewhere The Suez canal question has not abated in interest nut the Anglo phobism enveloping it has diminished dimin-ished It has crossed the threshold of the give and take stage so business busi-ness can be done It is proposed by leading economists that England do buy up the canal Well that is progress Were she content to accept ac-cept a loss of 00000000 francs distributed dis-tributed over four years she could become proprietor of all the scrip It is not clear if M de Lesseps has the exclusive right to cut canals between Port Said and Suez He i intends making a second so that will be the moment to test his right or to insist near the Khedive that the latter withhold sanction till all nations be represented on the directorate prorata to their importance import-ance The aim is not to deteriorate but to enhance a speculation while imparting to its control an international interna-tional not an exclusive character If Englishmen make up their minds to have an English In opposition to the French canal they will have it The step will kill M de Lesseps project for a second while ruining the first canal Common sense sug geats a compromise or if not to refer re-fer the matter to the prorogued conference con-ference The mystery about the Comte de Chambords illness is of no importance import-ance While he livesthe incarnation incarna-tion of the principle of divine right and the middle ages he is the best ally of the republic by rendering his form of monarchy and the most importantin point of followers impossible im-possible The Orleanists would receive re-ceive by his death an accession to their staff but not to their rank and file Nothing will upset the republic repub-lic as with every form of government govern-ment but its own blunders and what might succeed the best informed in-formed can only guess It is a blunder on the part of a section to keep nagging at the church and maintaining a state of irritation irrita-tion by cutting down the traveling I expenses of a cardinal the salary of assistant curates the endowments of theological professorships in the Catholic Protestant and Jewish colleges etc Attack the separation of church and state in front and manfullybut no pincushion wars Gambetta frequently warned repute licans that separation is not ripeand Rev M Lojson was not wide or the mark in his recent conference when he stated that the separation involved in-volved the existence of the Bepub 110 It is not the men but the women of France that are opposed to the separation of church and state and none more strongly than the republican fair sex People are astonished at the same chamber and senate voting the supplies sup-plies to protect Tonquin where the unknown enters so largely while voting last year against the expedite expedi-te Egypt In the latter case the French believed in Arabis star in the reports of their shortsighted agents and in the corroborating opinion of M de Lesseps It required re-quired TeleiKebir to open their eyes as it did those o Arabi They lost the stakes and will never forgive for-give England for winning the game singlehanded Hence much of the old Adam that has broken loose over the essentially commercial question of a second ship canal to Suez The excessive taxation of the country is happily coming home to every mans business and bosom Monsieur commences to indulge in British growls at the way he is being mulcted by national and local taxes Since 1870 the total increase to the budget is 1100 millions of francs of which 450 millions go to pay interest on the eight milliards o aned for the war The remaining 650 millions are for extra current expenditure Independent of local imposts each inhabitant in France pays the state 100 francs taxes France wants more children and less railways lower wages to enable en-able her to compete with Germany and England and a sweeping away of circumlocution offices Every seventh year the fronts of houses in Paris have to be wigged that is scraped and washed M Gamier the architect of the opera protests against that vandalism which skinning of the stone leads to its premature destrnction and destroys the moulding Why not scrape the Louvre Notre Dame and other public edifices The Germans Ger-mans whitewash their public buildings build-ings which is more practical though not artistic Three doctors drew attention to the practice of mixing glue or size in the whitewash for houses the animal ani-mal matter is not destroyed by the chalk and the microscope reveals that beneath the scales of the whitewash white-wash there are animalcules sufficient suffi-cient to engender every variety of fever How are we to whiten sep ulchres The running at Chantilly Derby Dayon Sunday gratified everybody every-body the weather was charming the walk across the forest delicious and breakfasting under the trees made one forget the orange groves and eucalyptus shades of Nice Everybody agreed that Frontin mounted by Archer would win the result proved that what everybody every-body says is true Frontin must run the gauntlet again at the Grand Prix against the Epsom cracks Franz Liszt has promised to perform per-form at a concert o raise funds for a statue to Berlioz he will be the guest of his soninlaw Emile Olivier Oli-vier It was Liszt made known Berlioz in Germany and so revealed him to France his native land Liszt also made known Schumann to Germany he aided too Wagner with his purse and experience to bring out Lohengrin at Weimar The Pope made Liszt a canon the Due of Weimar named him grand chamberlain the king of Holland struck a medal in his honor Hungary Hun-gary presented the composer with a sword he has as many decorations as Evans the dentistwho made Bismarck himself hold his jaw and a musician of another order Ortolans are delicious birdsto eat and fetch in the market with their top coat of fat bacon 3 francs each several sparrows as in times of old can be bad for a farthing they are plucked and while warm a straw filled with melted fowls fat is blown between their skin and flesh and then they are called oito lans Similarly for gudgeon which forms the white bait of Parisians and a favorite fry at all restaurants along the Seine An eel is skinned then a model gudgeon in metal stamps out the flesh which is rolled in flour and mixed with the real fishThe The assizes of Corsica have tried one Pisani for shooting a man He offered to marry the widow to make amends but the court sentenced him to penal servitude for life At the Chantilly race course I observed ob-served cold tea was sold as a beverage bever-age Hydropots were not in the odor of sanctity unless they ordered a thimbleful of brandy Dogs now wear a nickel or silver ring on the fore paw with the owners own-ers name engraved thereon It supersedes the collar In her closing days Marie Antoinette An-toinette instead of her portrait I I presented her friends with a locket containing some of her hair with I the motto Whitened by misfortune misfor-tune I A doctor offers 100 francs to anyone any-one who will cure his cold in the head i I I |