ABSTRACT
Laissez-faire Adam Smith's brilliant invective (1776) against government interference in economic matters massively influenced late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century politicians, Smith provided them with an academic cloak of respectability with which to justify their policy aims and ideas, in particular the desire for unbridled industrialisation. William Pitt the younger, who moved government policies a little in this direction at the end of the eighteenth century, summed up the theories as follows: 'trade, industry and barter would always find their own level, and be impeded by regulations which violated their natural operation' (quoted in Alderman, P.54). British trade nevertheless remained sluggish following the end ofthe Napoleonic Wars (1815). This prompted prominent statesmen, such as William Huskisson, Sir Robert Peel and W.E.Gladstone to implement, more vigorously, Smith's laissezfaire philosophy. The culmination of this activity was the repeal of the corn laws (1846), paving the way for Britain to become the 'workshop ofthe world'.
