Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/101

 pleased, and to import it on the most economical terms. If their knowledge of geography, as they were sometimes sneeringly told, extended no further than what they had learned from the Sacred writings, that grand old historical record taught them, that Egypt produced grain at less cost and in far greater abundance, than England; so great, indeed, that its granaries had once supplied the wants of Rome and of the Ancient World. When, therefore, they learned that that grain could not be had, because a comparatively small number of men—landowners and ship-*owners—who, from their wealth, exercising great influence in Parliament, were of opinion that the importation of food from other and cheaper countries meant ruin to them, the people, in mass, unequivocally desired to know, in a more detailed and more satisfactory manner than they had hitherto been told, "the reasons Why." The question they had now asked, through their leaders, was one which demanded an answer. First promulgated in the work-*shops of Lancashire, it spread in all directions. It was whispered in Belgravia; loudly proclaimed by the toiling millions; talked about by the cottagers in every valley and by the shepherds on every hillside; till, at length, it was adopted, in the most earnest manner, by the middle classes, the bone and sinew of Great Britain.

With such overwhelming aid, Lord Russell and his exploring party were enabled to penetrate the dense forest of protection, and reach the roots of the huge and rank old tree, which not merely overshadowed the rich soil of their native land, but spread its branches over their seaports, so as to prevent the importation from other lands of articles necessary for