A French Opinion Of America

The French workmgmen delegated by the trades -unions to visit our Oentennial show have been banqueted on their retmn to Paris, and treated to letters from Louis Blanc and Víctor Hugo, and a second-hand greeting frorn the now decrepit Papa Baspail. They gave their opiüions of America and the Ëxhibition without reservation, and these opinions are not flattering. We team from the speeches of Citizens Desmoulins and Damil and Prudent and Barodet that the Exhibitionis a failtlre, and that American industry is a misnomer - there is nothing of the sort, all our designs, all our productious, being either copies of French origináis clumsily done, or the work of French artisans, drawn here by the supposed industrial advautages of this country. These advantages, moreover, are overrated. The workicgman has no liberties ; negro slavery has been abolished, but more than replaced by slavery of the whites. The workingmaïi is deplorably ignorant - he has to labor fifteen hours a day in order to live miserably, and, af ter that, he has no leisure to run to the libraries. The workingman has no part in the values he produces- they reirforce the tyranny of capital. The gloom of the general view, in short, was desperate ; while, as to the shameless way in which we have stolen French ideas and methods, "the spectaoli was desolating to every serious spectator." And Citizen Desmonlins warned his brethren that the time was coming, when, by meansof this robbery, American markets would be closed to even the articles of luxury of which France has hitherto had a monopoly, as they aie already to some of its industrial arts (the work of the carriage-maker, for instance), and as they are to English cottons, coal and iron. There seems to be a trilling incoherence in this inention of cottons, coal and iron, which can hardly have been affected by our vicious robbery of French skill- but perhaps Citizen Desmoulins can trace a connection. Finally, cried the orator : " Let ua show ourseives the sons of the Fiench rovolution, by which the entire universe profits in spite of itself. Let us instruct ourseives ; we perish by ignorance ; we have to repair the ravages made by iourteen centuries of clerical obscurantism." Which sounds like a faint echo from another Desmoulins, friend of Danton and tribune of the people.