han absolutely
necessary, a belief that men had a right to be left free to do as they
chose, so far as such freedom was practicable.

As applied to economic interests this liberty meant freedom for each
person to make his living in the way he might see fit, and without any
external restriction. Adam Smith says: "The patrimony of a poor man
lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him
from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks
proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this
most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just
liberty both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to
employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks
proper, so it hinders the other from employing whom they think
proper." Government regulation, therefore, in as far as it restricted
men's freedom of action in working, employing, buying, selling, etc.,
was an interference with their natural liberty.

A second influence in the same direction was the prevalent belief that
most of the evils that existed in society were due to the mistakes of
civilization, that if men could get back to a "state of nature" and
start again, things might be much better. It was felt that there was
too much artificiality, too much interference with natural
development. Arthur Young condemned the prevailing policy of
government, "because it consists of prohibiting the natural course of
things. All restrictive forcible measures in domestic policy are bad."
Regulation was unwise because it forced men's actions into artificial
lines when it would have been much better to let them follow natural
lines. Therefore it was felt not only that men had a right to carry on
their economic affairs as they chose, but that it was wise to allow
them to do so, because interference or regulation had been tried and
found wanting. It had produced evil rather than good.

A third and by far the most important intellectual influence which
tended toward the destruction of the system of regulation was the
development of a consistent body of economic teaching, which claimed
to have discovered natural laws showing the futility and injuriousness
of any such attempts. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was published
in 1776, the year of the invention of Crompton's mule, and in the
decade when enclosures were more rapid than at any other time, except
in the middle years of the Napoleonic wars. Th