F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 149 
begun to be seriously affected by the cheap grain of the new countries. 
The doctrine was imposing by its simplicity and symmetry. It consisted 
of a few easily intelligible propositions, following readily one upon the 
other, and so sweeping in their range, and so optimistic in their impli- 
cations, that they dwarfed all cautious exceptions and qualifications. No 
great English economist indeed—neither Adam Smith, nor Malthus, nor 
Ricardo, nor John Stuart Mill—was, in fact, an out-and-out free trader so 
far as practical application was concerned. Still less were they resolute 
non-interventionists over the whole range of economic life; for entirely 
consistent and unlimited laissez-faire we should have to go to their more 
severely logical French contemporaries. But they based themselves on 
certain general principles, and they drew from them general conclusions 
which practical politicians could easily employ to justify an absoluteness 
of policy from which they shrank themselves ; they were reverenced as 
spiritual masters, whose occasional aberrations must be lamented or dis- 
regarded. 
I shall endeavour first to set forth the doctrine in a number of brief 
propositions; then to make some observations under each head. The 
several theses will not be found quite so consecutively stated in any of the 
authoritative writings, and I pursue this method partly for ease of sub- 
sequent reference. But it will be agreed, I expect, that they fairly represent 
the general structure of thought on which rested the whole edifice. 
These, then, are the propositions : 
1. That Nature is beneficent. By ‘ Nature ’ is meant, in this connection, 
the operation of the unpremeditated instincts, desires, passions of 
individual men and women. Any restriction of this operation by an 
authority outside the individual is ‘ artificial,’ and therefore bad. Nature, 
so understood, is the scheme of things created by God. And since God, 
with infinite wisdom, has established this mechanism for the fulfilment of 
His purposes, Nature is, as it were, His Vicegerent, and the ‘laws’ of 
its action are ‘ providential.’ But theistic language may be dropped, 
and the theistic conception even repudiated. And then ‘ Nature’ remains 
as self-directed, and beneficent of itself; and the reverence with which 
it is regarded amounts in effect to deification. 
This does not mean that every particular action dictated by a ‘ natural’ 
passion is, considered in itself, morally commendable: it may even be 
* shocking ’ to the moral sense. But the ‘ natural’ impulses work out on 
_ the whole for good, with only such a minimum amount of evil as is involved 
in the execution of the whole design. The wisdom of God is displayed in 
the folly of men: by an Invisible Hand they are led to promote salutary 
results which are no part of their intention. 
2, That individual Freedom or Liberty is in itself a good thing. This 
is a corollary from, or rather, only another expression for, the preceding 
proposition. For by ‘ freedom’ or ‘ liberty ’ is meant the right to pursue 
unchecked the instincts or passions implanted by Nature. It is true that 
this liberty must respect the like liberty of others; and reflection on what 
is involved in this qualification might suggest some doubt as to the validity 
of the proposition it qualifies. But this line of thought was left for subse- 
quent generations. 
So long as the purpose of the social union is conceived of as the enabling 
of the individual to follow his ‘ natural’ desires, their pursuit is regarded 
