Its staple manufactures were being
imported from the States and elsewhere at prices which the local
manufacturers declared to be ruinous. Many of the largest factories
were standing idle, a great majority of the remainder were being worked
at half or three-quarters time. Thoughtful men, looking ten years
ahead, saw the cloud, which even now was threatening enough, grow
blacker and blacker, and shuddered at the thought of the tempest which
before long must break over the land. Meanwhile, the streets were
filled with unemployed, whose demeanour day by day grew less and less
pacific. People asked one another helplessly what was being done to
avert the threatened crisis. The manufacturers, openly threatened by
their discharged employees, and cajoled by others higher in authority and
by public opinion, still pronounced themselves helpless to move without
the aid of legislation. For the first time for years Protection was
openly spoken of from a political platform.
Henslow, a shrewd man and a politician of some years' standing, was one
of the first to read the signs of the times, and rightly to appreciate
them.
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