The great reliance of England throughout this long course of revolutionary encouragement and aggression, was on the alliance with France, and the fond belief entertained by our liberal rulers that the _attente cordiale_ would be perpetual, and form a _national_ compact which would effectually screen us, whatever we did, from the hostility of the despotic powers on the Continent. The Revolution of December 2, 1851, in Paris, and the subsequent approval of military despotism by seven millions and a half of French citizens, may teach us what foundation there is for such a hope, or what reliance, in this free country, there is to be placed on identity of feeling with a military power, which begins its career with the deportation of some thousand citizens to Cayenne without trial, the decimation of the Assembly, dissolution of the National Guard, and promulgation, with general consent, of the despotic institutions of Napoleon. The dangers arising from those changes to the alliance with England, are so obvious that they have attracted _universal_ attention; and Government, however pacifically inclined, and however much under the control of the Manchester clique, are most properly taking measures to provide against the danger. Sheerness and Tilbury forts have been armed, and their magazines filled; two new batteries, of a hundred guns each, traced out at Plymouth; fortified camps, it is said, are to be formed round London, and a considerable addition made to our land and sea forces. We regret as much as any one can do, the necessity which exists for these changes; but the career of Liberalism, and of patronising revolutions all over the world, which we have pursued for the last twenty years, could not by possibility terminate in any other result. What makes us augur more favourably than we have done for long, on the state of the country, notwithstanding these accumulating foreign dangers, is, that the national mind at home seems to be at length awakening to a sense of the perils which threaten the Empire. We have the greatest pleasure in quoting the following article from the _Times_ on this all-important subject, which is the more valuable as that able journal has so long derided the idea of any danger being to be apprehended from foreign hostility:--