ersy which he had undertaken.

Cobden's chief companion in the struggle was John Bright, whose name has
been completely identified with that of Cobden in the repeal of the Corn
Laws. Bright was an orator of the highest order. He had all the
qualifications that make a master of eloquence. His presence was
commanding; his voice was singularly strong and clear, and had peculiar
tones and shades in it which gave indescribable meaning to passages of
anger, of pity, or of contempt. His manner was quiet, composed, serene.
He indulged in little or no gesticulation, he had a rich gift of genuine
Saxon humor. These two men, one belonging to the middle class of the
North, one sprung from the yeomanry of Southern England, had as a
colleague Charles Villiers, a man of high aristocratic family, of marked
ability, and of indomitable loyalty to any cause he undertook. Villiers
for some years represented the free-trade cause in Parliament, and
Bright and Cobden did its work on the platform. Cobden first, and Bright
after him, became members of the House of Commons, and they were further
assisted there by Milner Gibson, a man of position and family, an
effective debater, who had been at first a Conservative, but who passed
over to the ranks of the Free Traders, and through them to the ranks of
the Liberals or Radicals.

Every year Villiers brought on a motion in the House in favor of free
trade. For a long time this motion was only one of the annual
performances which, by an apparently inevitable necessity, have to
prelude for many years the practical movement of any great parliamentary
question. Villiers might have brought on his annual motion all his life,
without getting much nearer to his object, if Manchester, Birmingham,
Sheffield, Leeds, and other great northern towns had not taken the
matter vigorously in hand; if Cobden and Bright had not stirred up the
energies of the whole country, and brought clearly home to the mind of
every man the plain fact that reason, argument, and arithmetic, as well
as freedom and justice, were distinctly on their side.

The Anti-Corn-Law League showered pamphlets, tracts, letters,
newspapers, all over the country. They sent lecturers into every town,
preaching the same doctrine, and proving by scientific facts the justice
of the cause they advocated. These lecturers were enjoined to avoid as
much as possible any appeals to sentiment or to passion. The cause they
had in hand was one which could best