again laughed, much to the indignation of the others, who thought it
was a very serious state of affairs. It was a dam' shame that these
people were allowed to take the bread out of English people's mouths:
they ought to be driven into the bloody sea.

And so the talk continued, principally carried on by Crass and those
who agreed with him. None of them really understood the subject: not
one of them had ever devoted fifteen consecutive minutes to the
earnest investigation of it. The papers they read were filled with
vague and alarming accounts of the quantities of foreign merchandise
imported into this country, the enormous number of aliens constantly
arriving, and their destitute conditions, how they lived, the crimes
they committed, and the injury they did to British trade. These were
the seeds which, cunningly sown in their minds, caused to grow up
within them a bitter undiscriminating hatred of foreigners. To them
the mysterious thing they variously called the `Friscal Policy', the
`Fistical Policy', or the `Fissical Question' was a great Anti-Foreign
Crusade. The country was in a hell of a state, poverty, hunger and
misery in a hundred forms had already invaded thousands of homes and
stood upon the thresholds of thousands more. How came these things to
be? It was the bloody foreigner! Therefore, down with the foreigners
and all their works. Out with them. Drive them b--s into the bloody
sea! The country would be ruined if not protected in some way. This
Friscal, Fistical, Fissical or whatever the hell policy it was called,
WAS Protection, therefore no one but a bloody fool could hesitate to
support it. It was all quite plain - quite simple. One did not need
to think twice about it. It was scarcely necessary to think about it
at all.

This was the conclusion reached by Crass and such of his mates who