ABSTRACT
Contempt has given way to amazement, amazement to annoyance and alarm. Mr. Bright’s description of Protectionists as “fools only fit for a lunatic asylum,” as “dogs who had returned to their vomit” is typical of the attitude maintained, till lately, by the Free Trader. Instead, however, of laying to heart this wise advice, the disciples of Cobden continued to deride, whenever they condescended to notice, a movement that was spreading on all sides and threatening to undermine their supremacy. In this policy the Press, for the most part, has steadfastly upheld them, refusing admission at times to evidence against them, and indulging at others in cheap sneers at the folly of questioning their views. Foreign competition, which has ruined their farmers, exactly as they were warned by the Protectionists, was by him dismissed as an absurdity.
