Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/22

 CHAPTER I.

WAS THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS THE EFFECT OF ORATORY?

may be of use to try to discover what really won the battle between the manufacturers and the landholders on the question of the Corn Laws. For it was a battle between those two powerful classes, and the poor man, whose cheap loaf was put forward as the principal casus belli, had very little, indeed nothing, to say in the matter except so far as his voice might be heard through the exertions of his advocates, General Thompson and Mr. Villiers, who could hardly obtain a hearing in the House of Commons; indeed, General Thompson distinctly says, in his published "Letters to his Constituents," that he was trampled on in the House of Commons, and Mr. Villiers had such powerful opposition to encounter, that, as Mr. Disraeli said in his generous tribute to the character of a political adversary, " anybody but the hon. and learned Member for Wolverhampton would have sunk in the unequal fray."