He became one of the most effective
and persuasive popular speakers ever known in English agitation. He was
not an orator in the highest sense. He had no imagination and little
poetic feeling, nor did genuine passion ever inflame into fervor of
declamation his quiet, argumentative style. But he had humor; he spoke
simple, clear, strong English; he used no unnecessary words. He always
made his meaning plain and intelligible, and he had an admirable faculty
for illustrating every argument by something drawn from reading or from
observation or from experience. He was, in fact, the very perfection of
a common-sense talker, a man fit to deal with men by fair,
straightforward argument, to expose complicated sophistries, and to make
clear the most perplexed parts of an intricate question. He was exactly
the man for that time, for that question, and for the persuasive and
argumentative part of the great controversy 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.
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