THE END OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE

commerce, and machinery were the childrenof free competition—that free competitionbuilt London . But the Darwinians could goone better than that—free competition hadbuilt Man. The human eye was no longerthe demonstration of Design, miraculouslycontriving all things for the best; it was thesupreme achievement of Chance, operatingunder conditions of free competition andlaissez-faire. The principle of the Survivalof the Fittest could be regarded as a vastgeneralisation of the Ricardian economics.Socialistic interferences became, in the lightof this grander synthesis, not merely in-expedient, but impious, as calculated to retardthe onward movement of the mighty processby which we ourselves had risen like Aphrodite out of the primeval slime of Ocean.

Therefore I trace the peculiar unity of theeveryday political philosophy of the nineteenthcentury to the success with which it har-monised diversified and warring schools andunited all good things to a single end. Humeand Paley, Burke and Rousseau, Godwin and

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