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 to take advantage of the present movement to treat all parties, especially the Tories, in the spirit of a general amnesty.”  To the Queen his language was the same:  “You should now hold out the olive-branch a little.”—­Life of the Prince Consort, i., 83.]

[Footnote 259:  He became Prime-minister in September, 1841, and retired in June, 1846—­four years and three-quarters afterward.]

[Footnote 260:  “Life of the Prince Consort,” i., 266.  It may be remarked that, in spite of the opinion thus expressed by Sir Robert Peel, of those who, since his retirement in 1846, have held the same office, the majority have been members of the House of Commons.  The peers who have since been Prime-ministers have been Lord Aberdeen and Lord Derby; the members of the House of Commons have been Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Gladstone; though it may be thought that in his second ministry Mr. Disraeli showed his concurrence in Sir Robert Peel’s latest view, by becoming a peer in the third year of his administration.]

[Footnote 261:  Lord Stanhope tells us “the remedial resolutions moved by Pitt in the House of Commons, as abolishing the old duties and substituting new ones in a simpler form, amounted in number to no less than 2537.”—­Life of Pitt, i., 330.  Peel, in his speech, March 21, 1842, states that he reduces or takes off altogether (wherever the duty is trifling, but is practicable) the duty on 750 articles of import.]

[Footnote 262:  In the Commons by 307 to 184; in the Lords by 226 to 69.]