THE END OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE

promote the greatest good of the whole. Whatcould suit the business man better? Andcould a practical observer, looking about him,deny that the blessings of improvement whichdistinguished the age he lived in were traceableto the activities of individuals “on the make” ?Thus the ground was fertile for a doctrinethat, whether on divine, natural, or scientificgrounds, State Action should be narrowlyconfined and economic life left, unregulatedso far as may be, to the skill and good sense ofindividual citizens actuated by the admirablemotive of trying to get on in the world.

By the time that the influence of Paleyand his like was waning, the innovationsof Darwin were shaking the foundations ofbelief. Nothing could seem more opposedthan the old doctrine and the new—thedoctrine which looked on the world as thework of the divine Watchmaker and the doc-trine which seemed to draw all things out ofChance, Chaos, and Old Time. But at thisone point the new ideas bolstered up the old.The Economists were teaching that wealth,13