text:  But with customary hardihood of assertion maintain the economists--in whose wake follow the harder-mouthed coarser-minded Cobdens of the League--although manufactures have flourished under such a system to an extent which has constituted this country the workshop of the world they have so flourished in spite of the system; and in its absence left exposed to free unrestricted competition from abroad must inevitably have progressed at a more gigantic rate of speed still