The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

1972 IS FREE ENTERPR!SE COMING BACK? 607schoolteachers and ordinary citizens-had grown, matured, andwas now ready to blossom andbring forth fruit. While a givenpolitical or economic arrangementcan be imposed by force or fraud,people tend to· get about the systemthey deserve.Britain had been moving in thedirection of laissez faire economicsfor decades, because a lot ofpeople felt that this system wasright in the absolute sense, thesame as· the multiplication tablesor Newton's Law of Gravity. Still,man tends to let things go if hecan and not change unless the situationgets out of hand so thatsome sort of readjustment mustbe made. In the next several yearsa series of calamities provided themotivation for change, and thefree traders were there to capitalizeon the situation.The first of these crises was aserious and widespread economicdepression. We in America had ourshare of it too, the famous Panicof 1837, and no doubt we helpedto make it happen. Our "wildcat"financing of a host of internal improvement.]before the crash, projectsin which a lot of foreign capitalwas invested, resulted in severelosses for English investorswho bitterly resented the repudiationof American bonds. After thestate of Pennsylvania defaulted onher obligations, one wit writing inthe Edinburgh Review,18 "... remarkedthat whenever he met, aPennsylvanian at dinner in Londonhe wondered that, nobodycarved him up and served' him· inslices to every Englishman present."Of course, the depression resultedin widespread unemploymentand much suffering, butJohn Bright, a textile manufacturer,seems to have blamed theEnglish Corn Laws for much ofthe distress. Even the drastic declinein the sale of flannel toAmerica, which put a lot of Englishtextile workers out of work,Bright blamed on British policy.He said the Americans were justretaliating against British discriminationagainst grain fromthe United States. While he allowedthatthe Corn Laws were notto blame for everything, he insistedthat their repeal would gofar in solving a lot of other problems.A host of people across the