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Three great forces operated in it: nationalism, commercialism, democracy the marshalling of the races, the merciless, remorseless laissez faire of the dominant bourgeoisie, and the practical, actual working government of men within a very limited equality. The democracy of the nineteenth century is not the democracy of which the eighteenth century dreamed.
See, they said in effect, Western Europe oscillates between papal control and free thought; its industries, with their laissez faire methods, raise the few to enormous wealth and crush the many into a new serfdom worse than the old.
As the theory of laissez faire gradually broke down, moreover, giving way to the belief that the government ought to be the servant of the mass of the people, it was inevitable that the people should themselves turn more to legislation as a remedy for their grievances. To Washington, therefore, hurried the proponents of every reform.
The abandonment of the laissez faire policy, then, in favor of the principle of government regulation of industry is the outgrowth, not of any hostility to individual initiative, but of the conviction that the monopoly of industrial power by the few is a serious evil. It is manifestly impossible to restore to the masses the right of individual initiative.
'When we have settled that you go with me, you shall know all; but otherwise, the knowledge might rather be prejudicial to you. 'But are you serious in your purpose, with such inferior forces, to rise against an established government? It is mere frenzy. 'Laissez faire a Don Antoine; I shall take good care of myself.
After a short pause he came slowly to the head of the boy's bed. Very solemnly he touched the foot of the Christ on the cross with the tips of his fingers, and brought them to his lips with an indescribable reverence. After a moment, standing with eyes fixed on the face of the crucified figure, he said, in a shaking voice: "Pardon, bon Jésu! Sauves mon enfant! Ne me laissez pas seul!"
Sacre nom de Dieu," continued he, grinding his teeth, and pulling a handful of hair out of his rough head, which could have spared as much as Absalom used to poll "Que ca me fait bisquer." "Bah! Laissez aller, mon ami sit down and take a pipe," rejoined our captain. "This is but pettifogging work at the best: it won't pay for the means of resistance.
I can never again be surprised at Russian "laissez faire," or want of push and energy. It is all the result of the place itself. I feel in a dream, and wish with all my heart I could wake up in my own bed.
Plato and Carlyle are both possessed with the idea that they are living in a degenerate age, and they attribute its degeneracy to the same causes: Laissez faire; the growth of luxury; the effeminate preference of Lydian to Dorian airs in music, education, and life; the decay of the Spartan and growth of the Corinthian spirit; the habit of lawlessness culminating in the excesses of Democracy, which they describe in language as nearly identical as the difference of the ages and circumstances admit.
The small business which was then the rule meant the wide diffusion of economic power. A laissez faire policy would have furthered the interests of that large body of small independent producers who had but little representation in and but little influence upon the government.