text:  But on a question of fact which has a bearing upon the subject in hand we may be allowed to express our decided dissent from the _dictum_ somewhat arbitrarily launched in the article referred to in the following terms:--"We shall urge that foreign countries neither have combined nor ought to combine nor can combine against the commerce of Great Britain; and we _shall treat as a calumny the imputation that they are disposed to enter into such a combination_