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.