Lais

LAIS, la Ts, the name of two Greek hetwrm, celebrated for their remarkable beauty. The first lived at Corinth at the time of the Peloponnesian War; the most eminent and wealthy men of the time, including Aristippus, the Cyrenaic philosopher, and Diogenes, the cynic, fell under her spell. The younger Lais was the daughter of Timandra and was born at Hyccara, Sicily, 422 B.C. She came to Cor inth in her seventh year, and was educated in her profession by the painter Apelles. Later in life she followed a certain Hippostratus to Thessaly, where she was stoned to death by women in the temple of Aphrodite. But it is impossible to sift the really historic from mere anecdotal tradition in the accounts of these women which have come down to us. Consult Jacobs, li'si fir'. A slogan of great potency in the political and economic dis cussions of the 18th century, particularly in France. It made a strong appeal to the jurists and to the philosophers of an age engrossed with the idea of a °natural law,* which was higher than the edicts of kings and parlia ments and was the only right rule of human conduct. The French lawyers from the earli est times showed a predilection for the droit nature! in their theoretical disquisitions; but in practice, strangely enough, they strenuously ad hered to the medley of provincial coutunies, Roman jurisprudence and royal proscriptions, which constituted the laws of their country. It was the Marquis d'Arguesau who first in jected the natural law into the domain of legis lative polemics and made the phrase alaissez faire* a postulate for political argument. °Laissez-faire,D he declared, as early as 1735, should be the fundamental rule of government and should be adopted as its watchword by every public authority. °To govern better,* he said, "it is necessary to govern less,* a pro nouncement which was to become the palla dium of liberty with the Jeffersonian school of politics in America, and with individualists everywhere for a century and a half to come. But d'Arguesau, probably, got his catchword from Colbert, who records the fact that in 1680 a merchant, Legendre by name, on being asked what was required for the advancement of commerce and industry, replied: °Laissez fairer — leave them alone. What was meant was that the production and exchange of com modities should be relieved of the restrictive regulations and taxes with which they were burdened. Not only was international com merce hampered by export and import duties, of which few persons of those times would have thought to make complaint, but domestic trade was impeded by equally great, if not greater, obstacles. Every road was barred by gates at which toll had to be paid to the king or provincial seigneur and every commune ex acted octroi and other charges on everything that was brought in from other communes or the surrounding country. License fees were exacted from every calling and many indus tries were monopolized for the revenue they yielded to the state.

These were the conditions against which the aPhysiocrats* — the elder Mirabeau, Mer cier de la Riviere, Turgot and, above all, Fran cois Quesnay launched their protest. Quesnay, a philosopher and surgeon of note, and physi cian to Madame Pompadour, made the phrase "laissez-faire* the groundwork of his system of economics. He contributed a number of ar ticles to the of Diderot, wherein his theory of free trade was fully developed. The free exercise of his faculties, he declared, is every man's natural right as long as in the exercise of this right the similar rights of all other men are respected by him. Starting with

this as a postulate, Quensnay deduced as a cor ollary, the right of every man to the undis turbed enjoyment of the fruits of his handi work or intellectual activity. The free enjoy ment thereof included the right to freely dis pose of or exchange the commodities and other things of value thus produced. Any tax or other regulation imposed by public authority, which hinder such production, enjoyment or exchange, are invasions of natural right. The proper functions of government are, the pro tection of life and property and the administra tion of justice, and the assumption of greater or other powers is supererogation. faire, laissez passer,* let men make things and let the products pass. This is natural law in an economic dress. As a by-product of his theorizing Quesnay, evolved the impot unique, or single tax. Agriculture, he declared, stands apart from other industries in that it alone yields a net. All other industries involve merely a change of materials in form and posi tion; he, therefore, calls them But agriculture produces a °surplus value.* The productiveness of agricultural land varies; but the rental value fixes the rela tive capacity of any given piece of land to yield a net or surplus. Let taxation, therefore, be limited to ground rent. Incidentally this would prevent the friction which is caused by the shifting of taxation; a tax in the form of rent could not be shifted. The impot unique, of course, implied the abolition of customs du ties, transit dues and all other taxes on indus try and commerce. Adam Smith made the law of and demand, operating without re striction in a free market, the basis of his economic system. Jeremy Bentham adopted the reasoning of Quesnay with respect to the functions of the state, saying that political economy requires nothing from the latter but the security of industry from governmental interference. In other respects Bentham was not in sympathy with the theory of °natural law.* Indeed his pronouncements, that the state is the source of all law and that legis lation should have regard for "the greatest good of the greatest number,* are, in the main, negations of the doctrine of °laissez-faire.* The phrase, however, obtained currency in England, and more (one-sided) honor there than in the land of its origin. °Laissez-fairh* became the shibboleth of the free traders of the Manchester school, and of the orthodox political economy everywhere. Carlyle launched his invectives against the "dismal science* in vain. °Supply and demand and the devil take the hindmost* was his energetic translation of the phrase into English. But the policy of °hands-off* or °Iaissez-faire* remained a fixed principle in English legislation until quite re cent times, particularly with respect to the taxation of the rental value of, or potential surplus product from, land. Public opinion, and scientific opinion as well, has undergone a complete change. The extreme individualism, which supplied most of the axioms of politics and law down to the last quarter of the 19th century, and a long way into that period in some countries, has given way nearly everywhere.

Aidful, protective and regulative intervention in industrial affairs is being more and more completely recognized as a legitimate governmental function. The greatest good to the greatest number, rather than "natural right" and the greatest possible liberty of the individ ual, has become the active principle of modern legislation, and "laissez-fairel' has been swept into the political-dustbin.