text:  Absolute of wisdom however as they arrogate to be and casehardened as they are against assaulting results which should destroy their self-willed principle--a principle like the laws of the Medes and Persians proclaimed to be unchanged and unchangeable--in face of which facts are powerless and adverse experience contumeliously scouted or mendaciously perverted it is sufficiently obvious that lessons in political economy will less than from any quarter of the globe perhaps be accepted from St Petersburg--they will fall upon unwilling ears--upon understandings obtuse or perverted