Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

Macaulay contrasts what he sees as the broad, long-term public benefit of free trade with its frequent short-term political unpopularity. The remark reflects a classic tension in economic policy: measures that diffuse gains across many consumers (cheaper goods, wider markets, efficiency) can still provoke resistance because losses are concentrated among particular producers or interests who organize effectively. It also implies skepticism about popular economic intuition and about governments’ willingness to pursue policies whose benefits are real but indirect, gradual, or hard to attribute. In a wider nineteenth-century British context, the sentiment aligns with Whig-liberal arguments that commercial openness promotes national prosperity even when it clashes with protectionist sentiment.