Municipal trading

Abstract

One of the most strongly-marked characteristics of the older school of British Political Economy was its intense jealousy of State interference with the processes of industry or with the course of trade. From Adam Smith down to Fawcett and Cairnes no principle was more strongly inculcated than this? that for the State to interfere to protect industry or to encourage trade or to regulate the conditions under which either was carried on was sure to end in economic mischief. This principle rested on certain broad grounds of political expediency and economic law which I cannot attempt to do more than indicate here. In the first place, these writers considered Governmental interference in trade as entirely outside the proper sphere of government, and, indeed, wholly inconsistent with one of its most important functions. The great and supreme functions of government, after securing the State from external foes and from internal disorder, were the maintenance of the liberty and property of the individual citizen. But it is impossible for the State to dictate the conditions under which industry or trade shall be carried on without interfering with the liberty of the individual in the most important matter which concerns him, the occupation by which he earns a living for himself and those dependent on him. The State, whose function it is to secure men's liberty, was thus itself guilty of a serious breach of that liberty in regard to one of the most important concerns of life.