Cobden and the Peace Society in the peaceful
years anterior to the outbreak of the war be-
tween Nicholas and the Porte, in which England,
with other Western Powers, found herself in-
volved. Mr. Kinglake thus nervously, and, on the
whole, impartially writes of Cobden and Bright
at this era:

"Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright were members of
the House of Commons. Both had the gift of a
manly, strenuous eloquence; and their diction, be-
ing founded upon English lore rather than upon
shreds of weak Latin, went straight to the mind
of their hearers. Of these men, the one could
persuade, the other could attack; and, indeed,
Mr. Bright's oratory was singularly well qualified
for preventing an erroneous acquiescence in the
policy of the day; for, besides that he was honest
and fearless--besides that, with a ringing voice,
he had all the clearness and force which resulted
from his great natural gifts, as well as from his
one-sided method of thinking, he had the advan-
tage of generally being able to speak in a state
of sincere anger. In former years, while their
minds were disciplined by the almost mathemat-
ical exactness of the reasonings on which they
relied, and when they were acting in concert
with the shrewd traders of the North who had a
very plain object in view, these two orators had
shown with what a strength, with what a mas-
terly skill, with what patience, with what a high

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