Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/42

 Yet it has been remarked by those who have long observed closely the working of political machinery, that great powers of speech united to small powers of judgment are the curse of free governments. The man who is fitted to give the best counsel in a difficult crisis is almost never the man fitted to take the lead in a debating society or in a tumultuous assembly of any kind. There may be cases which may look like exceptions to this remark; nevertheless it has been often desired by those who have reflected on the matter that the blessings of a free government could be obtained without the addition of a curse which almost brings back some of the worst evils of despotism, under which free speech is a thing forbidden.

Those who watched the movement for the repeal of the Corn Laws from its commencement to its close noted four men as the leading spirits in that movement—General Perronet Thompson, elected Member of Parliament for Hull, June, 1835; the Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, elected M.P. for Wolverhampton, January, 1835; Richard Cobden, Esq., elected M.P. for Stockport, August, 1841; the Right Hon. John Bright, elected M.P. for Durham, 1843. The extracts from the letters and speeches of Mr. Cobden, with notices of his life, fill nearly a