The iron law of wages, the assumed transition of every energetic worker to the ranks of wealth, the danger lest the natural ability of the worker to better his condition be sapped by giving to him that which his self-respect can better win--these became the unconscious assumptions of all economic discussion.
In all this, as in the foundation with which Adam Smith provided it, we must not miss the element of truth that it contains.

No poison is more subtly destructive of the democratic State than paternalism; and the release of the creative impulses of men must always be the coping-stone of public policy.

Adam Smith is the supreme representative of a tradition which saw that release effected by individual effort.

Where each man cautiously pursued the good as he saw it, the realization was bound, in his view, to be splendid.

A population each element of which was active and alert to its economic problems could not escape the achievement of greatness.