Laissez-Faire, Laissez-Passer, History of the Maxim

Abstract

Gournay is still generally credited with being the inventor of this phrase, and this apparently on the authority of his friend Turgot, who, however, in his Éloge of Gournay, simply says:This supposed agreement of the views of Gournay with the observation of Legendre has been translated by Dupont de Nemours into the positive statement: ‘From his (Gournay’s) profound observation of facts he had drawn the celebrated axiom, laissez-faire, laissez-passer‘(Oeuvres de Turgot, ed. Daire, i. p. 258); and has been followed by most of the writers on economic literature down to M.G. Schelle, Dupont’s last biographer (Du Pont de Nemours et l’École Physiocratique, Paris, 1888, p. 19).