CHEnnoLlt0 aamx.—The other day the Moniteur de la Ylotte put
forth its views on the meaning of Cherbourg. The Moniteur de Armee has now followed suit. " We have not hitherto noticed the inconceivable attitude assumed with regard to France by a few of the English journals, and of which the Times is the most important and the most unreasonable. That journal, which comprises amoms' its writers men equally distinguished for their honourable character and their talents, too often blends with the ex- cellent articles they write the bitterest diatribes against a country whose alliance it had appreciated only the day before at its full value. It directs the grossest and most calumnious attacks against a Prince whose noble cha- racter, profound sagacity, and powerful genius it will exalt the following day, thus yielding to the force of truth. Whence comes this incoherency of language? Can it be that there are two description's of readers for the Times—serious and sensible men, to whom the serious article is addressed— the principal piece, as they say at the theatre ; and the old Sohn. Bull, with his anti-French prejudices, for whose amusement the farce must be played ? This hypothesis is not improbable, but it is by no means consistent with the dignity of a great and conscientious journal. The Times and its few auxiliaries in the attacks directed against France cannot but know that there is no reason for the absurd fear which they endeavour to propagate among the English people of an invasion by France. "It is degrading to the power of the great nation to which it is addressed to endeavour to persuade her that it would be possible suddenly to prepare means of attack sufficient to conquer her, or that a Government which has given so many proofs of sagacity and prudence would think of subjugating three kingdoms, or even any portion of that warlike country, without im- mense preparations, which could not be concealed. Those people have not the most remote notion of war who believe that a numerous army can be equipped secretly, and that it can be landed on a neighbouring coast with the same facility that a pleasure trip can be made from Paris to London. The completion, so long expected, of the works at Cherbourg, undertaken by order of Louis 2llIKV., and to which fresh impulse was given by Napoleon I. more than half a century ago, has been the signal for fresh attacks, and on this occasion the most unseemly irony gives its ignoble aid to the violence of party spirit. The time is long past, thank God ! when an English Minister could at his pleasure deprive France of its only military port in the North Sea, and in our time no English statesman would think of preventing us from having a maritime establishment on the coast of the Channel worthy of being shown to our brave neighbours of Portsmouth or Plymouth. Each nation possesses, without any dispute or reciprocal limitation, a naval establishment suited to its necessities and itspower. Who can find fault because this naval force has a secure place of refuge on its sea frontier? The unreflecting writers who sound the alarm-bell in England against an imaginary danger, by which that great nation will not suffer itself to be alarmed, would obtain very miserable success if at their voice the British coast should bristle with redoubts and cannon ; if in full peace a numerous army should be assembled on a coast that nothing menaces, and which is more loudly demanded by the exigencies of the war in China and in India ; if, in fine Great Britain should exhaust the treasure destined for these distant operations, too really urgent, in order to tranquillize the unfounded uneasiness of some ridiculous and timid dreamers. And on this inadmissible supposition, if France, failing in her well-known habitual frankness and good faith, should cherish, as she is accused of doing, per- fidious designs against a friendly Power, what greater triumph could those unskilful writers prepare for her than to ruin the finances and wear out the population of the adversary which it is by all means endeavoured to create, without having fitted out a single ship or assembled a single regiment on that formidable coast and in that gigantic port, except those that are to figure in the inauguration to which the Emperor Napoleon III. has graciously in- vited Queen Victoria? The port of Cherbourg must necessarily be some day finished. A sufficient number of hands have been labouring at it for more than a century and a half. A sufficient amount of millions has been expended on it every year since 1803, in the face of the whole world. The Emperor of the French was actuated by a noble and courteous feeling, like all those by which he is animated, when he invited a British fleet to share with a French fleet the honour of entering the port the first, and in simul- taneously displaying its a04. It is not thus that an honourable heart pro- ceeds when it meditates hostile plans. We have reason to believe that these sentiments of cordial understanding have been loyally interpreted and ac- cepted by her Majesty the Queen of England, and by the statesmen who sit in her councils. The sound of the guns of the two allied Powers united to celebrate this solemn inauguration will be the best reply to make to the de- clarations of the notes and its adherents, whom it may have met among the cosmopolitan demagogues impatient to find in an European war, which 4eY Will be powerless to excite, some chance of success for their anarchical rmidlinations."
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