Lists of the disc-holders were published in batches in the _Epoch_ from day to day, and were read with extraordinary and ever-growing eagerness. In vain the _Times_ and other sober journals denounced the folly and danger which these ever-lengthening lists exemplified. It was of no use to declare that people of high character and good position, were blindly, even madly, allying themselves with the scum of London and the off-scourings of the Continent; that their action would infallibly paralyse their only reliable protectors, and promote the cause of social disruption by giving the League the semblance of respectability. There was nothing to show, said the leader-writer, that this so-called Emigration League took any practical steps to give effect to its ostensible programme. On the contrary, there was ample evidence that it organised immigration of anarchists and miscreants of all sorts into England. Never before had the foreign element been so much in evidence in London. The tardy and much vaunted legislation against the influx of aliens had proved little better than a fiasco. Foreigners still swarmed to Grimsby, Hull, Newhaven, Southampton, and Harwich, though ineffectual steps were taken to check the influx at those ports; while no similar machinery had been fairly tried at Dover and at Folkestone. Aliens were everywhere, not only on English ground, but also on British ships. In vessels belonging to the port of Cardiff alone, the crews were foreigners in the proportion of fifty per cent. Thus the mercantile marine, which should be the great feeder of the Royal Navy--our first line of defence against Continental enemies--was become an actual source of danger, instead of strength, to the nation. But warnings fell on deaf or indifferent ears. Personal safety had become the dominant idea. Panic was in the air, and the purchase, for such in truth it was, of the little metal disc, was now widely regarded as the only means of securing a magnet by which the alarmed population could hope to steer clear of the vortex towards which the tides of life were tending.