ABSTRACT
To certain economists it appears clear that the science of political and social economy is completely contained in these four words: laisser-faire, laisserpasser. Whatever the questions asked, whether it concerns children’s and women’s labour in factories or the regime in the colonies, the corn trade or transport activities, they never see more than a single, unique solution: individual initiative operating in complete freedom. On browsing through the article ‘Chemins de fer’ [Railways] by Mr Michel Chevalier, in the Dictionnaire de l’économie politique,iii written about twenty-five years ago and still remarkable inmany respects, one finds successively discussed all the problems relating to this means of communication, with one exception only: should construction and operation be the business of the State? The author does not seem to doubt for a single moment that these are tasks for private companies. When talking of the organization of railways in England around 1843, he tells us that some people considered private ownership ‘hardly at all in the public interest’ and asked for the English railways ‘to be bought and exploited by [194] the State’iv
Then he adds:
This was a far-fetched conclusion. The English government would have been wrong to acquire the railways by compulsory purchase. That would have meant a very serious attack on the spirit of [industrial] association,
which is one of the driving forces in English society; it would also have meant an attack on freedom of trade, one of the indispensable attributes of modern civilization. Up till now the railway administrators were mistaken and freedom of trade had skidded off the straight and narrow. This was no reason for treating the companies with violence, or for systematically impeding freedom of trade as far as railways were concerned. The associations would have listened to reason. Freedom of trade bears the seeds to remedy its own excesses, with the help of time.2
