Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/24

 could subdue the States of Greece, and that he was under no moral obligation not to use his power for that purpose. Except to enthusiastic schoolboys it appears absurd to suppose that any words, though uttered by the greatest speaker known among men, could either turn Philip from his purpose or turn the Greeks of that time into the Greeks who had fought at Marathon and Salamis, or turn himself into Miltiades or Themistocles.

It was the opinion of Charles Stuart that he had certain rights over the souls, bodies, lands, goods and chattels of the people of England, which rights, if carried out as he sought to carry them out, did not leave to the people of England any souls, bodies, lands, goods and chattels which they could call their own. The eloquence of John Pym, whether it be called adorned or unadorned, was certainly equal to the eloquence, "the unadorned eloquence," to borrow the phrase of Sir Robert Peel, of Richard Cobden. But it was not the eloquence of John Pym that settled the controversy, it was an eloquence or a logic, the nature of which is well expressed in Cornet Joyce's answer to King Charles, who asked if he had any authority in writing. Joyce pointed to a body of about one thousand soldiers mounted and drawn up behind him, and