.. 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 to take advantage of the present movement to
treat all parties, especially the Tories, in the spirit of a general
amnesty.
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