Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/158

 or land as the only things worth having and worth striving for.

Mr. Villiers's position under these difficulties has been described with singular clearness in the Political Memoir which forms an introduction to Mr. Villiers's Free Trade Speeches:—

"'His keen perception made him acutely sensitive of the embarrassments to which the predominance of one body of men in the movement exposed the cause of Repeal iu both Houses of Parliament; whilst their comparative ignorance of Parliamentary procedure, and the stubborn strength that was arrayed against them in the Legislature, placed them in no little danger, in their impatience of temporary defeat and the consciousness of numerical superiority in the country, of compromising the cause by such acts of indiscreet zeal as could only retard the object they had in view.'"

Mr. Villiers's situation was one beset with difficulties which it is not easy to analyze completely. That Mr. Villiers's difficulties in the House of Commons arose from no want of power as an advocate, as far as the most honourable functions of an advocate are in question, is shown by the declaration of a political adversary whose debating powers rendered him a competent judge of parliamentary speaking. Mr. Disraeli, when