The use of such language argues great ignorance of the national temper. We have heard a good deal lately of what is termed the dogged Anglo-Saxon spirit, the main characteristic of which we take to be its decided antagonism to bullying, and its inveterate hatred of coercion. It is too much to expect that a controversy such as this should be conducted without some asperity of language, and therefore we make no clamorous complaint when Mr Cobden, or his friends, think proper to designate the British agriculturists as "ignorant clodpoles" and "horse-shoe idiots," or the landed proprietors as "a selfish and degraded faction," or the Protectionist press as the "hireling tools of oppression." These are very old and very harmless terms of rhetoric, and we are not sure that we can claim entire vindication from the charge of having retorted with tolerable energy. The real danger begins when men step beyond constitutional limits, and advocate resistance to the legislature by appealing to the passions, as they have pandered to the prejudices, of the mob. Having premised so much, we think no one can misinterpret our motives, if we set ourselves seriously to the task of refuting a great fallacy which has been hatched and propagated by the Free-traders. It is one so monstrous in itself that we hardly could have supposed that any man, who had reflected for a moment on the subject, could have yielded to the delusion: nevertheless, we believe it to be most common, and it has been over and over again repeated at public meetings, until it has lost its quality as an assertion, and been treated as a recognised fact. It is within the recollection of all of us, that, both within the walls of Parliament and at the great outward gatherings of the League, the superiority of the manufacturing over the agricultural interest of Great Britain was broadly asserted, and assumed as the basis of the leading argument of the Free-traders. Sir Robert Peel expressly adopted this view in 1846, while advocating the repeal of the policy, which he had hitherto professed to support; we say, _professed_, because no man now doubts--indeed, it is fairly admitted by himself, with something like a sneer of triumph--that for many years he had been practising a deliberate imposture on the public. This view necessarily must have had some foundation on authority, if not on fact; and we can trace that authority to a statistical writer, Mr Porter, on whose accuracy, and method of dealing with figures, far too much reliance has been placed by statesmen high in office.