ly-prevalent theological
utilitarianism were at least as individualistic as later laissez-faire
economics. Englishmen, moreover, had long been jealous of governmental
power, and at the height of English mercantilism they insisted upon
limits to appropriate governmental intervention. It is not safe,
therefore, to label anyone before Adam Smith as an exponent of
laissez-faire merely on the ground that he would exempt a few specified
types of economic activity from interference by government. It would be
misleading also to apply to eighteenth-century writers modern ideas as
to the dividing line between "interventionists" and exponents of
"liberalism" or of "laissez faire." As compared to modern
totalitarianism, or even to modern "central economic planning," or to
"Keynesianism," the English mercantilism of the late seventeenth and
the eighteenth century was essentially libertarian. It is only as
compared to Adam Smith, or to English classical and the Continental
"liberal" schools of economics of the nineteenth century, that it was
interventionist.

Adam Smith is regarded as an exponent of laissez-faire because he laid
it down as a general principle (subject in practice to numerous and
fairly important specific exceptions) that the activities of government
should be limited to the enforcement of justice, to defense, and to
public works of a kind inherently unsuitable for private enterprise. He
based this doctrine partly on natural rights grounds, partly on the
belief that there was a pervasive natural and self-operating harmony,
providentially established, between individual interest and the
interest of the community, partly on the empirical ground that
government was generally inefficient, improvident, and unintelligent.

There is nothing of such doctrine in Mandeville; there is abundant
evidence in his writings that Mandeville was a convinced adherent of
the prevailing mercantilism of his time. Most English mercantilists
disapproved of some or all kinds of sumptuary regulations on the same
grounds as Mandeville disapproved of some of them, namely, the
existence of more suitable ways of accomplishing their objectives or
the mistaken character of their objectives. Mandeville's objection to
charity schools on the ground that they would alter for the worse the
supplies of labor for different occupations was based on his belief
that England, unlike some other countries, already had more tradesmen
and skilled artisans than it