Is this an overdrawn picture? Let us see. France at this moment is convinced that we are on the verge of a state of famine. Almost all the French journalists, believing what they probably wish for, and misled by the repealing howl, and faint-hearted predictions of the coward, assume that our home stock of provision is not sufficient to last us for the ensuing winter. That is just the situation to which we should be reduced _every_ year, if Messrs Cobden, Bright, and Company had their will. What, then, says our neighbour, and now most magnanimous ally? Is he willing--for they allege they have a superfluity--to supply us in this time of hypothetical distress--to act the part of the good Samaritan, and pour, not wine and oil, but corn into our wounds? Is he about to take the noblest revenge upon a former adversary, by showing himself, in the moment of need, a benefactor instead of a foe? Oh, my Lord Ashley! you and others, whose spirit is more timid than becomes your blood, had better look, ere you give up the mainstay of your country's prosperity--ere you surrender the cause of the agriculturist--to the _animus_ that is now manifested abroad. We have reason to bless Heaven that it has been thus early shown, before, by mean and miserable concession to the clamours of a selfish interest, we have placed Britain for the first time absolutely at the mercy of a foreign power. Scarce a journal in France that does not tell you--loudly--boldly--exultingly--what treatment we may expect from their hands. "At last," they say, "we have got this perfidious Albion in our power. Nature has done for us, in her cycle, what for centuries the force of our arms and concentrated rancour could not achieve. The English newspapers in every column teem with the tidings of failure. The crop of corn is bad beyond any former experience. It cannot suffice to feed one half of the population. The potato crop also, which is the sole subsistence of Ireland, is thoroughly ruined. Scarce a minute fraction of it can be used for the purposes of human food. The British Cabinet are earnestly deliberating on the propriety of opening the ports. The public, almost to a man, are demanding the adoption of that measure--and doubtless erelong they will be opened.