I have not hesitated to speak out my mind of the policy condemned, not in personal hostility or irritation, however much I respect the great qualities of Mr. Gladstone himself, however little I desire to see him displaced by his rivals. No one will venture to believe that I speak in the interest of party, or have any quarrel with my own countrymen. All that I have said in condemnation of the African policy of England I would say in condemnation of the Chinese policy in France. I would say it all the more because, for the reasons on which I will not now enlarge, our brethren in France have said so little, and that little with so broken a voice. It is a weakness to our common cause that so little has been said in France. But I rejoice to see that in the new number of our Review, our director, M. Laffitte, has spoken emphatically against all disturbance of the _status quo_, and the policy of founding colonial empires. It behooves us all the more to speak out plainly here. There is the same situation in France as in England. A ministry whom the majority trust, and whom the military and trading class can bend to do their will; a thirst in the rich to extend the empire; a thirst in the adventurers for careers to be won; a thirst in the journalists for material wherewith to pamper the national vanity. There, too, are in the East backward peoples to be trampled on, a confused tangle of pretexts and opportunities, a Parliamentary majority to be secured, and a crowd of interests to be bribed. In the case of M. Ferry, we can see all the weakness, all the helpless vacillations, all the danger of his game; its cynical injustice, its laughable pretexts and excuses, its deliberate violation of the real interests of the nation, the formidable risks that he is preparing for his country, and the ruin which is as certain to follow it. In Mr. Gladstone’s case there are national and party slaves for the conscience of the boldest critic.