THE END OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE

mixed with it. The early nineteenth centuryperformed the miraculous union. It har-monised the conservative individualism ofLocke, Hume , Johnson, and Burke with theSocialism and democratic egalitarianism ofRousseau, Paley, Bentham , and Godwin . 1

Nevertheless that age would have been hardput to it to achieve this harmony of oppositesif it had not been for the Economists , whosprang into prominence just at the rightmoment. The idea of a divine harmonybetween private advantage and the publicgood is already apparent in Paley. But it wasthe Economists who gave the notion a goodscientific basis. Suppose that by the workingof natural laws individuals pursuing their owninterests with enlightenment in conditions of

1 Godwin carried laissez-faire so far that he thoughtall government an evil, in which Bentham almost agreedwith him. The doctrine of equality becomes with himone of extreme individualism, verging on anarchy.“ The universal exercise of private judgment,” he says,“ is a doctrine so unspeakably beautiful that the truepolitician will certainly feel infinite reluctance in admit-ting the idea of interfering with it ”.—Vide Leslie Stephen ,op. cit., ii, 277.

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