34 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



France during the reign of Louis IX, when every branch of industry 

 in the kingdom was put under governmental regulation and restric- 

 tion. These regulations and restrictions were imposed in the name 

 of a state-craft which assumed to be wise above the laws of natural 

 production. They were the expressions of an artificial selection 

 working against the natural selections of supply and demand in the 

 figure of political economy, and it was in opposition to the enormi- 

 ties of this system that the school of political economists known in 

 France as the physiocrats rose at the close of the i8th century to 

 make their indignant protest in the name of laissezfaire. And in 

 subsequent times as well as in other lands there had been abundant 

 room to challenge the tariff regulations of any given epoch in the 

 name of the same watchword. 



Shall we say, then, that the maxim of laissez faire is final in 

 political economy? By no means. It is final as against the pre- 

 tension that man, by legislative artifice, however ingeniously de- 

 vised, can make any industry profitable to the commonwealth against 

 the forces of natural production. But in so far as man has higher 

 ends in society than the creation of wealth the maxim is «^/ final. 

 If there be those who, in the name of a naturistic philosophy, would 

 plead for the right to grind up the bodies and souls of men in the 

 natural pursuit of wealth, it is easy to see that such a false and one- 

 sided adjustment of economical relations would but call for a new 

 evolution of public intelligence and public morality, as seen in the 

 preventive justice which should be devised in order to guard the 

 community from such excesses of the laissezfaire doctrine. But 

 neither the public intelligence nor the public morality can have a 

 full field for the exercise of their natural prerogatives in the sphere 

 of public economy until laissezfaire has allowed the forces of natural 

 production to exhibit the full measure of their strength, without let 

 or hindrance, save such as may be neeeded to guard interests higher 

 than the material wealth of a nation. 



Major Powell : The paper by Prof. Ward has been of great 

 interest to me, as well as the discussion which it has elicited. In 

 the progress of institutions it often becomes necessary that the old 

 should be torn down in order that the new may be erected on the 

 same ground ; and in every great civilized land there are those who 

 devote themselves to destruction, while others engage in construc- 

 tion. The theory of the destructionist has of late years obtained 

 much vantage-ground from tlie doctrines of evolution, and the com- 



