Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/312

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Notes on the Anti-Corn-Law Struggle.

Napoleon Bonaparte before the Battle of Waterloo as they went to the Czar Nicholas before the Crimean War. It would no more have stopped the career of Bonaparte than it stopped that of Nicholas. Those traders who are so eager to get rich and cry out for "Peace on earth and goodwill toward men," do not see that they and their goods would be a prey to the thousands of robbers who swarm, and will continue to swarm upon earth, if it were not for that infanterie Anglaise which at Waterloo made good General Foy's remark to Bonaparte on the morning of the battle—"L'infanterie Anglaise en duel c'est le diable."

In the course of an adventurous and stormy life—of the result of which he modestly said that he had been "successful in life"—the Duke of Wellington had opportunities of seeing the effect of the phrase "Peace on earth and goodwill to men," and he wrote thus in a letter to the Earl of Liverpool, dated "Sta. Marinha, 23rd March, 1811":—

"I shall be sorry if Government should think themselves under the necessity of withdrawing from this country, on account of the expense of the contest. From what I have seen of the objects of the French Government and the sacrifices they make to accomplish them, I have no doubt that if the British army were for any reason to withdraw from the