Laissez faire, laissez passer

I think your correspondent "A MAN IN A GARRET" (No. 19. p. 308.) is not warranted in stating that M. de Gournay was the author of the above axiom of political economy. Last session Lord J. Russell related an anecdote in the House of Commons which referred the phrase to an earlier date. In the *Times* of the 2nd of April, 1849, his Lordship is reported to have said, on the preceding day, in a debate on the Rate-in-Aid Bill, that Colbert, with the intention of fostering the manufactures of France, established regulations which limited the webs woven in looms to a particular size. He also prohibi…