Full text : The life of Richard Cobden

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1841 thoroughly penewrs’~d with polirical morality end with
mr. 87. homanity Then thore came the points of difference. Mr
Bright bad all th> resources of passion alive within bf
breast. He was carried along by vehement political ange”
and, deeper than that, there glowed a wrath as stern as thot
of an ancient prophet. To cling to a mischievous err?"
seemed to him to savour of moral depravity and corrapti®
of heart. What he saw was the selfishness of the aristocrs”)
and the landlords, and he was too deeply moved by hatte’
of this, to care to deal very patiently with the bad reasonité
which their own self-interest inclined his adversaries ¥
mistake for good. His invective was not the expressi®”
of mere irritation, but a profound and menacing passio””
Bence he dominated his audiences from a height, while by
companion rather drew them along after him as friends and
equals, Cobden was by no means incapable of passions of
violent feeling, or of vehement expression. His fightin8
qualities were in their own way as formidable as Mr. Bright’®
and he had a way of dropping his jaw and throwing psd
his head, when he took off the gloves for an encounter 7
good earnest, which was not less alarming to his opponent
than the more sombre style of his colleague. Still, it was of
passion to which we must look for the secret of his oratoric®
success. I have asked many scores of those who koe
him, Conservatives as well as Liberals, what this secret wat
and in no single case did my interlocutor fail to beg”
end in nearly every case he ended as he had beg™
with the word persuasiveness. Cobden made his way 2
men’s hearts by the union which they saw in him o
simplicity, earnestness, and conviction, with a gingnl®”
facility of exposition. This facility consisted in a roma
able power of apt and homely illustration, and a curio®
ingenuity in framing the argument that happened t0 p
rtd, Dovides He Salt tn thas Wiley un fo 7
            
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