152 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 



tility of a specially deadly character to British 

 interests in the Orient. 



The Palmerstonian policy and methods were 

 most violently antagonized by the Manchester 

 School, as Cobden, Bright, and their followers 

 were called. It was the cardinal doctrine of 

 this school that internal, not international, 

 affairs furnished the proper field for govern 

 mental activity at this particular time; that 

 the welfare of the people and the due course of 

 foreign relations would be best promoted by 

 the readjustment of taxation, expansion of 

 trade and industry, and abstention from the 

 waste of war and of armaments in preparation 

 for war. The two theories as to the policy of 

 the government came to a decisive issue in the 

 House of Commons in the famous debate over 

 Don Pacifico in the middle of 1850. Against 

 an assault led by Disraeli, Gladstone, Peel, 

 and Cobden, Palmerston defended himself in 

 his most celebrated speech, won a decisive tri 

 umph in the vote of the House, and thus com 

 mitted Great Britain to the policy associated 

 with his name. Only a few months later his 

 natural bumptiousness, accentuated doubtless 

 by the sense of his great victory, brought him 

 into conflict with his chief, Lord John Russell, 



