Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/185

 have of discovering a poet who shall soar higher than Shakspeare and Milton.

Mr. Villiers in a letter to me, of June 3, 1884, says, there was nothing of which the man whose name the Club bears had a greater horror than of being made the hero of a tavern dinner. Mr. Villiers in the same letter also says:—

"'The Cobden Club, so far as it celebrates a great achievement in our commercial History, enables a great many people, by sending in their subscriptions, to announce their adoption of Free Trade views. The Club by means of annual subscriptions and original payments upon entry receive, I believe, a good deal of money, and much of this, as I have understood, has been expended in the publication and circulation of works on Free Trade, and of speeches of certain public men which have been selected by the Secretary.'"

It follows that the Secretary of the Cobden Club is invested with a certain amount of power bearing the proportion to the power Mr. Cobden had when the Anti-Corn Law League expended on the press a thousand pounds a week which an unknown quantity bears to a thousand pounds a week