But the storm of personal opposition and abuse which followed cannot be so easily excused. At first anonymous attacks appeared in newspapers on the “highly ornamented and meretricious” character of the design, on the dangerously artistic beauty of the drawings, as tending to mislead the judges, and on the incompetency of the judges themselves, who were designated as mere amateurs. Hints were even ventured upon as to the favourable disposition of the chief commissioner towards Mr. Barry. It was pronounced that the competition was a “complete failure,” and that it ought to be renewed on a different basis, and with a greater freedom of choice as to style. When the design was altered and enlarged, to suit an extension of the site, the alteration was called a plagiarism, and alleged to vitiate the selection of the judges. All this was bad enough, but it is only that to which all public men are exposed, an acknowledged drawback to the great benefit of a free press, which will exist as long as anonymous writing is recognised. If this had been all, it might have been patiently borne. But it was not all. Far more decided and unusual measures followed. An exhibition of the unsuccessful designs was opened on March 21st, 1836, with a view to invite comparisons. Finally a meeting of the unsuccessful competitors was held, to take steps to set the award aside. The chairman (one of the most distinguished of the unsuccessful competitors) stated the case, as one in which public duty must conquer private friendship, and defy the danger of misconstruction as to the motives of action; and after some discussion it was resolved, that the award of the judges was not confirmed by the public, that the prizemen did not merit the preference which that award gave them, that, in fact, a board of amateur judges was necessarily incompetent, and that a petition should be made to be heard at the bar of the House of Commons, to show cause for a competent commission to revise the whole proceedings. The resolutions did not pass without energetic protest, especially from Mr. (now Prof.) Donaldson. It was urged by him (as by Sir E. Cust, in a pamphlet subsequently published) with a force and truth fatal to the objectors, that all these proceedings came too late, and that those, who by competing had acknowledged the judges, could not now with any propriety vilify them, and set their decision aside.