other nation shares with them in an equal
degree. And if that may safely be trusted, as undoubtedly it may, to
maintain the supremacy of our warlike fleets, the preponderance of
argument seemed greatly on the side of those who contended that our
commercial fleets needed no such protection; to which it may be added
that exceptions to a general rule and principle are in themselves so
questionable, that the burden of proof seems to lie upon those who would
establish or maintain them. But the advocates of free-trade were not
content even with this triumph, though it might have been thought a
crowning one, and in the course of the next year they succeeded in
carrying a resolution which (though Lord Derby and the opponents of the
act of 1846 were now in office) was not resisted even by the ministry,
being, in fact, the result of a compromise between the different
parties; and which asserted that "the improved condition of the country,
and especially of the industrious classes, was mainly the result of
recent legislation, which had established the principle of unrestricted
competition, ... and that it was the opinion of the House that this
policy, firmly maintained and prudently extended, would, without
inflicting injury on any important interest, best enable the industry of
the country to bear its own burdens, and would thereby most surely
promote the welfare and contentment of the people." Such a resolution
was, in fact, the adoption of free-trade as the permanent ruling
principle of all future commercial legislation. And even before the
adoption of this resolution, the feeling in favor of free-trade had been
greatly strengthened by the Great Exhibition, which not only delighted
the world for six months with a spectacle of such varied and surpassing
beauty as even its original projector, the Prince Consort, had not
pictured to himself, but which had also the farther and more important
effect of instructing the British workman in every branch of
manufacture, by bringing before his eyes the workmanship of other
nations; and, as we may well believe (though such a result is not so
easily tested), of improving the mutual good-will between rival nations,
from the respect for each which the experience of their skill and
usefulness could not fail to excite.

Notes:

[Footnote 258: On the 20th of February, 1840, Baron Stockmar writes:
"Melbourne told me that he had already expressed his opinion to the
Prince that the Court ought t