text:  With every system where competition is the acknowledged principle it is clearly impolitic to interfere; nor can we avoid the painful conviction that this first measure though comparatively light and generally unimportant was put out by way of _feeler_ in order to test the temper of the Scottish people--to ascertain whether eighteen years of prosperity might not have made them a little more supple and pliable and whether they were likely to oppose to innovation the same amount of obstinate resistance as before