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anti-foreigner sentiment obviously useful as grist to the Protectionist mill.
Mr. Chamberlain and his Tariff Reformers were right in thinking the time favourable for their project. But it was not favourable enough. The financial solution was not grave enough; the industrial depression did not respond to expectations; the sentiment of Imperial unity was too vague; the advantages of good business relations with foreign countries were too obvious; cheap food was too evidently advantageous to the working classes. Again, the Tariff Reformers did not get in their work in time. The glamour of militarist exploits had already faded, the debauch had left the country with a headache and the bill. The advocates of Protection in 1903 and the following years were unable to substitute sentiment and passion for reasoning and calculation. Hard facts and the logic of the situation told too heavily against them. To persuade the nation that its trade was going to the dogs when common experience