,.,,n tended toward an opposition to mercantil rn. The eulogy of the "natural' and the growing belief that social and economic proc esses functioned most perfectly when in com plete conformity with those natural laws which Newton and others had shown to govern the physical universe, combined to discredit so ani final a system as the extensive legislative re strictions on free competition which were em bodied in the mercantilistic order. In this way social, economic and political theory were being reshaped so as to reinforce the practical com mercial and administrative objections to the old colonial regime. See ECONOMICS.
2 Economic Liberalism and the Assault on Mercantilism.— At the same time when the American colonists were offering a successful resistance to British mercantilism in practice, economic theorists were submitting a doctrinal attack upon the foundations of this system. The leaders of the movement were the French Physiocrats and their defender, Turgot; and the English classical economists, with their follow ers on the continent. This group of so-called economic liberals assumed that economic pros perity and social welfare could best be pro melted by securing as far as possible the con formity of economic processes and institutions to that supposedly beneficent 'natural order' which was believed to pervade and govern the universe. This conformity would be realized with greatest assurance through ushering in an era of free competition in the economic realm. To do this it would be necessary to repeal the restrictive legislation which had grown up as the bash and essence of mercantilism. There fore, the practical program of the economic lib erals called for a thorough-going abolition of the restrictions on the perfect freedom of the development of industry and trade. Indeed, the Physiocrats held that the chief function of the state, at least temporarily, was the passing of Laws repealing the restrictive legislation for merly enacted. While there were important points of difference in the details of the em phasis of this group of writers, varying all the way from the physiocratic eulogy of agricul ture to the excessive praise of mechanical manu facturing by J. B. Say, all united in opposing the forcible acquisition of colonial territory and in advocating near or complete freedom of trade. The doctrines of the theorists were 11 armly espoused by the new capitalistic class which was produced by the Industrial Revolu tion. as well as by all others likely to benefit
by a greater degree of industrial and conrrner cal freedom. In England, Huslcisson, and later Cobden and Bright led in the attack upon the ild navigation and corn laws, and by 1860 this roue had succeeded in bringing free trade to land and in discrediting to a very consid er le degree the idea of the advantages of an aggressive imperial policy. The 'cosmopolitan dream" of Cobden embodied the acceptance of complete freedom of trade, anti-imperialism and international arbitration. In France the work of Cobden in applying these new theories in the realm of statesmanship was carried on to Guizot, who opposed French intervention in the Levant, and by Bastiat and Saint-Beuve who strove with some success to secure the radical downward revision of the French tariff system, which was realized by the Cobden treaty of 1860 and similar subsequent agree ments with other states. In Prussia, Maassen, Billow, Eichhorn and von Motz carried through the liberal trade policy embodied in the Zollverein of 1818-67. Every important Euro pean state was affected to some extent by this reaction against trade restrictions and colonial expansion. But at the very time when free: trade and anti-imperialism were receiving the largest degree of practical application great historic changes were beginning to work out their effects in a manner designed to wreck the program of the economic liberals. Nationalism, intensified by the French Revolution and sub sequent political events, made for the defeat of cosmopolitanism, while the increased produc tivity made possible by the Industrial Revolu tion stimulated that search for additional mar kets in backward districts which doomed the impulses supporting anti-imperialism. • With the French intervention in Tunis and other north African territory and the English purchase of the Suez Canal stock, and with the reaction to ward higher tariff schedules which was initi ated by the German act of 1879 the clay of eco nomic liberalism Ions over and there began that commercial warfare and that struggle for colo nial dominion which, with other co-operative forces, led straight to the European War of 1914. See Fm TRADE; GREAT BRITAIN—THE Fm TRADE MOVEMENT; IMPERIALISM.