"Vested interests had fattened upon free trade"

..."The clarity of British thinking was not helped by the fact that certain vested interests had fattened upon free trade and established a grip upon the levers of power that was hard to break. The British establishment, seduced by the City of London’s financiers, turned towards wealth manipulation rather than wealth creation, a story familiar to us on Wall Street today..."

from "America Aping Britain's Decline Through Free Trade"