Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/29

 few short notes. I say intend to make, from the following circumstance. One evening when I was going from Spring Gardens with him and Mr. C. P. Villiers in a cab to one of the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, in Covent Garden Theatre, Mr. Cobden, as he tore up and threw out of the cab window a piece of paper which he held in his hand, said that, as he was obliged to speak that evening at Covent Garden, he had intended to write down some notes of what he might say, but that he had been interrupted by people wanting to see him on business, and had therefore been unable to write down anything. The result was an excellent and most effective speech.

Even when an orator appears to treat certain topics in a manner bearing some resemblance to the manner of Demosthenes, we should not be entitled to conclude that such orator was imitating or even had ever read Demosthenes. I do not remember ever meeting with such a resemblance between the manner of a modern orator and the manner of Demosthenes as occurs in a passage of a speech of Robespierre. The words of Robespierre are:—"Non, nous n'avous point failli; j'en jure par le trône renversé, et par la République qui s'élève!" These words bear a certain resemblance to the