We must look round us, and accept the facts as they stood.

So accustomed had we become to the predominance of our position that it was difficult at first to realise a position of rivalry that threatened our manufacturing interests in their hitherto undisputed lead in the world's markets.

The tale of our exports for the last five years conveys at once its moral and its warning.
Statistics were then cited.
As when the gloomy pedagogue has concluded his exhortation, statistics birched the land.

They were started at our dinner-tables, and scourged the social converse.

Not less than in the articles, they were perhaps livelier than in the preface; they were distressing nevertheless; they led invariably to the question of our decadence.