618 LIFE OF COBDEN, [oms?
1854 nation that engaged in it. Lord Palmerston began his
A1.50. reply by referring to Mr. Bright as “the honourable and
reverend gentloman.” Cobden rose to call him to order for
this flippant and unbecoming phrase. Lord Palmerston s2id
he would not quarrel about words, Then he went on to 52)
that he thought it right to tell Mr, Bright that his opinion
Was a matter of entire indifference, and that he treated hif
censure with the most perfect indifference and contempt
On another occasion he showed the same unmannerliness 0
Cobden himself. Cobden had said that under certain circumstances
 he would fight or, if he could not fight, he
would work for the wounded in the hospitals, “Well,”
said Lord Palmerston in reply, with the sarcasm of 8
schoolboy’s debating society, “there are many people in
this country who think that the party to which he belongs
should go immediately into a hospital of a different kind,
and which I shall not mention.” This refined irony was
8 very gentle specimen of the insult and contumely which
was poured upon Cobden and Mr. Bright at this time.
“The British nation,” said Lord Palmerston, in a private
letter, “is unanimous in this matter; I say unanimous, for
I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright and Co. for anything.”
Nobody who turns over a filo of newspapers for this period,
or the pages of Hansard, or the letters of Cobden and Mr.
Bright to one another, will deny that Lord Palmerston’s
estimate was perfectly correct.
It is impossible not to regard the attitude of the two
objects of this vast unpopularity as one of the most truly
admirable spectacles in our political history. The moral

# June4, 1855, Mr. Disraski on one occasion during this period complained
of the “patrician bullying of the Treasury beuch,” and amid great cheering
told Lord Palmerston that he had used language which was not to be expected
* from one who is not only the leader of the Houge of Commons~—which is
an accident of life ~but who is algo a gentleman.” July 15, 1858.
T Mr. Ashley's Life. ii. 325