Star Trek

Now, I love Picard's accent but have you ever occassionally had issue or wonder about why a character who is suppose to be French has a clear British accent? Even when he visited his French relatives they too had British accents. I sometimes wonder why Stewart did not create a French accent when that is what his character is suppose to be. Anybody else wonder about the accent?

People who are extremely adept at a foreign language will generally adopt the accent of the form of the language from which they learned it. 

India uses English as a trade language, so the vast majority of Indians speak English nearly as often as their native language. When they speak English, they often have an English accent. This would also be true of the French... if a French speaker learned English, and learned it FLUENTLY, and grasped the inflections and was able to adapt, he would adopt whatever accent he learned the language from.

So my assumption is that Picard was an exceptional English learner, has very strong vocal command, and thus has an English accent simply because he's so good at this second language. 

They picked Patrick Stewart because he was a good actor.  Most Americans seem to prefer British accents to French accents.

In Lord Of The Rings, one of the Hobbits had a Scottish accent, while all the others spoke with American or British accents.  They tried to get him to sound like the others, but his timing was off (I read).  So, they told him to just speak naturally, and no one seemed to complain.

The alternative to Stewart speaking normally would be to encumber him with a fake French accent. Regardless of how well he pulled it off, it would be a handicap. And then people would ask, why does he need to speak English when the universal translator could do it for him?

I think it's safe to assume that he speaks English fluently and doesn't have a noticeable French accent. He also speaks Klingon, but I don't know enough about the language to tell whether or not he has an accent.

Yes, in the show, it is probably assumed he is speaking Federation Standard or something.

If people prefered british accents, why did they make Picard french in the first place?

In the Season One, Picard spoke French
on a couple of episodes. The most he
ever spoke it to, though, was to a
Holodeck Program named Minuet (!!!).
Picard's mother, who appeared to him
in a vision, once, spoke with a French
accent (though the actress is American).
After that, they just seemed to let it go.

Maybe he's just speaking French and the universal translator gives him a British accent.

More likely though, the French of the 24th century all speak fluent English, and the accent comes from France's proximity to Britain.

I'm with others on this one. Do you really want him to sound like Inspector Cleuseau (sp?) or the French taunting guys from Monty Python? Besides that, the UT gives American accents to aliens, so it must certainly be able to render French into English.