THE END OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE

laissez-faire was, I think, first brought intopopular usage in England by a well-knownpassage of Dr Franklin’s . 1 It is not, indeed,until we come to the later works of Bentham— who was not an economist at all—that wediscover the rule of laissez-faire , in the shapein which our grandfathers knew it, adoptedinto the service of the Utilitarian philosophy.For example, in A Manual of PoliticalEconomy , 2 he writes : “The general rule isthat nothing ought to be done or attemptedby government; the motto or watchword ofgovernment, on these occasions, ought to be—Be quiet. . . . The request which agri-culture, manufacturers, and commerce presentto governments is as modest and reasonable asthat which Diogenes made to Alexander :Stand out of my sunshine.”

From this time on it was the political cam-paign for Free Trade, the influence of the

1 Bentham uses the expression “ laissez-nous faire,”Works, p. 440.

2 Written in 1793, a chapter published in the Biblio-theque Britannique in 1798, and the whole first printedin Bowring’s edition of his Works (1843).

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