ON THE POLITICS OF THE CLASSICAL ECONOMISTS.

The article discusses classical economist's theory of the state and of government in context to the development of liberalism. In urging economic freedom upon the world, the classicists were expressly, or by implication, insisting that all men should have the right to seek their material welfare in their own way and, moreover, that such a policy was not only morally proper but also psychologically inevitable. In their more extravagant moments, the classicists warned the state that any attempt to stifle enterprise was as foolish as an effort to turn the biology of an organism away from its natural course. Yet in their observations on political doctrine and the organization of the state they were far from holding democratic views. The political doctrine of the classical economists was in reality a liberal doctrine, despite its paradoxical relationship to economic freedom, while their standards of political practice can be described as "utilitarian." The classical economists were less exacting about the form of government than about its proper objectives, when they gave explicit attention to the matter of governmental structure.