Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/300

 business of putting down the bread-tax. There is something in this; and yet Wellington did far more to put down Bonaparte than Cobden did to put down the bread-tax. In answer to Mr. Cobden's "forty thousand British troops" argument, did Mr. Cobden never hear that his hero Bonaparte said that there were only two kinds of troops—good and bad; and that there were no troops in Italy, save the Sardinians, that could stand fire; that they fled like wild ducks at the first volley. Mr. Cobden writes as if he had completely approfondi the philosophy of courage and cowardice. I do not presume to say that I know very much of what is meant by standing fire; but a friend of mine who was on Sir De Lacy Evans's staff at the battle of the Alma, where he was knocked off his horse by a splinter of a shell, and at the battle of Inkermann was on the staff of