ABSTRACT
I am pleased and honoured to be invited to comment on Emma Rothschild’s new book, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment. Professor Rothschild begins her book with the provocative and propitious contention, ‘This book is about laissez-faire when it was new’, and indeed it is (Rothschild 2001: 1). Although the concept of laissez-faire precedes the eighteenth century, thinking through its actual practice is new and important for her two protagonists, Adam Smith and Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicholas de Condorcet.
