ABSTRACT
We cannot allow the meeting of the Marseilles Free Trade Society (Association Marseillaise du Libre Echange) on the 24th ult., to pass without some further mention of it than a couple of lines amongst our foreign intelligence. ‘More than a thousand persons,’ says the Courrier de Marseilles, ‘crowded the large room, too small for the multitude assembled, to hear the two deputies of Marseilles, MM. Clapier and Reybaud, M. Fred. Bastiat, the zealous apostle in France of Free Trade, and with the hope of applauding one of the most eloquent orators of the age, M. de Lamartine, who had promised to honour the meeting by his presence.’ They were not disappointed. The great poet was there; the two deputies were there; and there was assembled an audience of merchants, and others, of Marseilles – almost comparable, in numbers, to those which crowded Covent Garden to hear the orators of the League. A great number of ladies were present, as at Covent Garden, to listen to the dry discussions of political economy. Such an event, to be followed by the approaching meeting of a Congress of Political Economists at Brussels, on the 16th instant, is one of the significant signs of the progress of that ‘new faith’ on the continent, which has wrought such great changes in England, and which, according to the President, M. L. Luce, ‘is consistent with the designs,’ (if we may not say it is based on the acts,) ‘of Providence, sharing unequally its divine gifts amongst the numerous families of mankind. Practically adopted in England, and theoretically favoured by the leading minds of Europe, it must, ere long, become the creed not of one nation or of one sect, but the universal creed of mankind.’
