And on general
principles, both of commerce and statesmanship, the claim was, as they
urged, irresistible, unless some object of greater importance still than
uniformity of legislation--namely, the national safety, bound up as it
unquestionably was in the perpetual pre-eminence of the national
navy--required an exception to be made. But for the maintenance of our
maritime supremacy it was, as Burke had preached three-quarters of a
century before, better to trust to the spirit of the people, to their
attachment to their government, and to their innate aptitude for
seamanship, which they seem to have inherited from the hardy rovers of
the dark ages, and which no 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, .
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