, of appreciating instruction, if not wilfully
perverse, as the Cobdens, or of restraining the less coarse but more
fluent flippancy and equally unscrupulous assurance of friend Bright,
from resort to that stock and stale weapon of vulgar minds which is so
readily drawn from the armoury of falsehood. To the end of the chapter
they will lie on, until doomsday arrive, and they sink, like the Henry
Hunts, _et id genus omne_, their at least as well-bred predecessors of
the popularity-hunting school, to their proper level in the cess-pool of
public contempt. Time, which executes justice upon all in the long run,
cannot fail to lay the ghost of cotton and anti-corn law imposture, even
in the troubled waters of the muddy Irk and Irwell, where first conjured
from. And now, having shown how the cotton manufacture of Great Britain
was from its birth cradled, rocked, and dandled into successful
progress; how it was fostered and fenced round with protection and
prohibitive legislation as against competition from abroad; we shall
proceed with our review of the rise and career of _protected_
manufactures in Russia. And we would counsel "one who has whistled at
the plough," whose "farming notes" in the _Morning Chronicle_, when
confined to such matters of practical detail as may be supposed to lie
within the scope of his own experience and comprehension, are not
destitute of interest and information, though with distorted and
exaggerated views, to ponder well before a next reiteration of the
random and absurd assertion that the "corn-law has done to agriculture
_what every law of protection has done for every trade that was ever
practised_--it has induced negligence, and, by its uncertain operation,
has obstructed enterprise." Instead of whistling at the plough, such a
writer almost deserves to be whipped at the cart's tail for so
preposterously dogmatic an assumption. It has yet to be demonstrated,
and the proof is challenged, that ever a great interest, whether
manufacturing or agricultural, was established in any part of the world,
since the creation, without the aids and appliances of legislative and
guernatorial patronage. The degree, the qualification the practical
limitations, which in the progress of time, with social and industrial
changes supervening at home and abroad, may be rendered expedient or
necessary in the application of the principle, constitute quite a
different question, which may be discussed and entertained witho