is well known that the final cause of rupture was the dogged persistance of the French members of the joint commission in urging the tariff of France, in all its nakedness of prohibition, deformity, and fiscal rigour, as the one sole and exclusive regime for the union debated, without modification or mitigation.  On this ground alone the Belgian deputies withdrew from their mission.  How this result, this check, temporary only as it may prove, chagrined the Government, if not the people, and the mining and manufacturing interests of France, may be understood by the simple citation of a few short but pithy sentences from the Journal des Debats, certainly the most influential, as it is the most ably conducted, of Parisian journals:—­“Le ’ZOLLVEREIN,’” observes the Debats, “a prodigieusement rehausse la Prusse; l’union douaniere avec la Belgique aurait, a un degre moindre cependant, le meme resultat pour nous....  Nous sommes, donc, les partisans de cette union, ses partisans prononces, a deux conditions:  la premiere, c’est qu’il ne faille pas payer ces beaux resultats par le bouleversement de l’industrie rationale; la seconde, c’est que la Belgique en accepte sincerement es charges en meme temps qu’elle en recuiellera les profits, et qu’en consequence elle se prete a tout ce qui sera necessaire pour mettre NOTRE INDUSTRIE A L’ABRI DE L’INVASION DES PRODUITS ETRANGERS, et pour que les interets de notre Tresor soient a couvert.” This is plain speaking; the Government journal of France worthily disdains to practise mystery or attempt deception, for its mission is to contend for the interests, one-sided, exclusive, and egoistical, as they may be, and establish the supremacy of France—­quand meme; at whatever resulting prejudice to Belgium—­at whatever total exclusion of Great Britain from commercial intercourse with, and commercial transit through Belgium, must inevitably flow from a customs’ union, the absolute preliminary condition of which is to be, that Belgium “shall be ready to do every thing necessary to place our commerce beyond the reach of invasion by foreign products.”  Mr Gladstone may rest assured that the achievement of this Franco-Belgiac customs’ union will still be pursued with all the indomitable perseverance, the exhaustless and ingenious devices, the little-scrupulous recources, for which the policy of the Tuileries in times present does not belie the transmitted traditions of the past.  And it will be achieved, to the signal detriment of British interests, both commercial and political, unless all the energies and watchfulness of the distinguished statesmen who preside at the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade be not unceasingly on the alert.