The points in the Queen’s Speech which attracted attention after the Italian Question were the hostilities with China and the Commercial Treat with France, which Mr. Cobden had negotiated during the fall of the preceding year. The Treaty with China was to have been ratified at Pekin. But when our Ambassador attempted to proceed thither he found the Peiho river blocked, and the Chinese forts not only opened fire, but repulsed our squadron. A joint expedition was fitted out in conjunction with France to avenge this defeat, and compel the Chinese Government to ratify the Treaty at Pekin, and complaints were made that Parliament had not been consulted before the joint expedition had been decided on. The history of Mr. Cobden’s Commercial Treaty has been told at great length elsewhere,[59] so that we need do no more than say it was signed on the 29th of January. Manchester immediately hailed Napoleon III. with the same effusive admiration that it bestowed on Peel in 1846. The English press, foreseeing an era of extended trade and permanent peace, ceased its attacks on the French Emperor, and complimented him so violently, that M. Baroche told Mr. Cobden its flattery would make the Treaty unpopular in France. The Treaty was at this stage merely the skeleton of a reciprocal fiscal arrangement. England gave France coal and iron duty free. England further agreed to reduce import duties on French wines and various articles of French manufacture. France, on the other hand, engaged not only to limit her customs duty to thirty per cent. on the value of English goods, but by the 13th Article she agreed to convert _ad valorem_ duties into specific duties by a supplementary convention. The extent to which, under this Article, duties were reduced would of course measure the usefulness of the Treaty.