Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/23

 Sir Robert Peel attributed his change of opinion on the subject of the Corn Laws to "the unadorned eloquence of Richard Cobden." Mr. Cobden was certainly at once a most agreeable and a most effective speaker. Mr. Bright, who may be admitted to be a very competent judge, said in a note to me, "Mr. Cobden's speaking was to me always charming, so simple, easy, and true. He did not often rouse to passion, but his power to convince was something wonderful."

The words here applied by Mr. Bright to Mr. Cobden's speaking may truly be applied to Mr. Bright's own speaking, of which, as of Mr. Cobden's, force and clearness are the characteristics. Nevertheless the repeal of the Corn Laws was not the work of the eloquence adorned or unadorned of Mr. Cobden, or of anybody else. Neither did eloquence nor logic, nor even geometrical reasoning ever decide any great conflict of opinion, as was said by Hobbes more than two hundred years ago. If it had been contrary to the interest of men who were the ruling power in a country that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two right angles, that doctrine would have been suppressed in that country.

It was the opinion of Philip of Macedon that he