ABSTRACT
The origins of liberal anti-statism go back at least to the radical dissent of the Levellers in the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. The other major intellectual that influenced the anti-statism of the French laissez-faire liberals, and Gustave de Molinari in particular, was the economic ideas of Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say. Molinari was to use Smith's two concepts—the spontaneous order of the market and the system of natural liberty—to build his theory of extreme liberal anti-statism. Molinari was to use Smith's two concepts—the spontaneous order of the market and the system of natural liberty—to build his theory of extreme liberal anti-statism. Like Molinari, Say quotes the important passage from Smith's Wealth of Nations which argues that the reason justice was so cheap in England was that the separate courts competed for clients by offering them the speediest service at the lowest price. Auberon Herbert faced the same problem that Molinari had with labeling his philosophy.
