The Charleston Daily News

Peace! Pence!

A late London paper gives an account of an Anglo-French Working-class Exhibition, which was opened at the Crystal Palace on the 7th of August last, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of peace between England and France. Speeches were made and songs sung in English and French; the band of the Crystal Palace played the national anthem, and the exhibition was commenced under the brightest prospects, and with great enthusiasm. The number of visitors for the day was 12,370.

The feuds and animosities which have existed for so many years between these two greatest nations have at last subsided; for although a half-century has passed without actual warfare, peace with both of them has been but a name, that would have been easily erased if an opportunity for a rupture had been seized on either side; but the policy of the people, as is well known, made an apparent friendship where there was actual dislike. But in the movement recorded above, where the artist, farmer and mechanic—true representatives of the popular will—step forward and inaugurate a peace-offering beautiful thing, there must be sincerity; and the future welfare of these two countries will consequently be greatly increased.

Two other portions of the world, we know of, may take these nations for an example, and from the identity of interests which exists between them, put themselves in the same enviable situation in one fiftieth the time.