But this has been materially changed by the consequences of the great European revolution of 1848; and it may now be doubted whether the greatest dangers which threaten society are not those of foreign subjugation and the loss of national independence. By the natural effects of the general convulsions of 1848, the armies of the Continental states have been prodigiously augmented; and such are the dangers of their respective positions, from the turbulent disposition of their own subjects, that they cannot be materially reduced. In France there are 385,000 men in arms; in Austria as many; in Prussia, 200,000; in Russia, 600,000. Fifteen hundred thousand regular soldiers are arrayed on the Continent ready for mutual slaughter, and awaiting only a signal from their respective cabinets to direct their united hostility against any country which may have provoked their resentment. Such have been the results of the French Revolution of 1848, and the rise of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" in the centre of European civilisation. Disastrous beyond all precedent have been the effects of this revolutionary convulsion, from which so much was expected by the ardent and enthusiastic in every country, upon the cause of freedom throughout the world. Not only has the reign of representative institutions, and the sway of constitutional ideas, been arrested on the Continent, but the absolute government of the sword has been established in its principal monarchies. Austria has openly repudiated all the liberal institutions forced upon her during the first throes of the convulsion, and avowedly based the government upon the army, and the army alone. Prussia is more covertly, but not less assiduously, following out the same system; and in France, the real council of state, servile senate, and mock assembly of deputies of Napoleon, have been re-established, the national guard generally dissolved, and the centralised despotism of Louis Napoleon promises to rival in efficiency and general support the centralised despotism of Augustus in ancient days. Parties have become so exasperated at each other, that no accommodation or compromise is longer possible; injuries that never can be forgiven have been mutually inflicted; the despotism of the Prætorians, and a Jacquerie of the Red Republicans, are the only alternatives left to Europe; and the fair form of real freedom, which grows and flourishes in peace, but melts away before the first breath of war, has disappeared from the earth. Such is the invariable and inevitable result of unchaining the passions of the people, and of a successful revolt on their part against the government of knowledge and property.