Though Lord John Russell, an honest adherent from his youth to the enlightened policy of Charles James Fox, followed in their footsteps, and struggled onwards amid innumerable difficulties, it was impossible for him to force his way, almost alone against the class to which he belonged, and through the rank grass and tangled brushwood which surrounded this huge old tree. Indeed, almost every member of the ancient aristocracy except himself was opposed to the course he had resolved to pursue; and although the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832 carried on his motion, and, in a great measure, by his early and unwearied exertions, had returned to the House of Commons many men ready to render him every assistance, the power of that House was still insufficient to effect, to anything like the extent he had in view, the laudable and, indeed, noble object of his ambition, a thoroughly unfettered commerce. On the people, however, he could fully rely: they were now inquiring more earnestly than they had ever done how it was that the food necessary for their existence was so heavily taxed, and why they were not allowed to buy that food where they pleased, and to import it on the most economical terms. If their knowledge of geography, as they were sometimes sneeringly told, extended no further than what they had learned from the Sacred writings, that grand old historical record taught them, that Egypt produced grain at less cost and in far greater abundance, than England; so great, indeed, that its granaries had once supplied the wants of Rome and of the Ancient World. When, therefore, they learned that that grain could not be had, because a comparatively small number of men—landowners and shipowners—who, from their wealth, exercising great influence in Parliament, were of opinion that the importation of food from other and cheaper countries meant ruin to them, the people, in mass, unequivocally desired to know, in a more detailed and more satisfactory manner than they had hitherto been told, “_the reasons Why_.” The question they had now asked, through their leaders, was one which demanded an answer. First promulgated in the workshops of Lancashire, it spread in all directions. It was whispered in Belgravia; loudly proclaimed by the toiling millions; talked about by the cottagers in every valley and by the shepherds on every hillside; till, at length, it was adopted, in the most earnest manner, by the middle classes, the bone and sinew of Great Britain. [Sidenote: who leads the way against Protection.]