Sumner Holds That the French Merchants Had Put Laissez-Faire Exactly: "Let Us Manage Ourselves," "Do Not Meddle; Do Not Regulate; Do Not Give Orders"

For Sumner, as for Bastiat and Spencer, laissez-faire does not mean "things left to themselves" or "the unrestrained action of nature"; on the contrary, it means "the. . . rational application of human intelligence to the assistance of natural development." Sumner holds that the French merchants had put it exactly: "Let us manage ourselves." Thus, he conceives laissez-faire to be a policy of self-management where individuals apply brains "to trade and industry so as to develop and improve them" without the guidance or wisdom of interfering statesmen or legislators. To the statesman the warning is clear: "do not meddle. . . do not regulate. . . do not give orders. . ."

--Dominick Thomas Armentano, "The Political Economy of William Graham Sumner: A Study in the History of Free-Enterprise Ideas" (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 1966), 66-67.