One of Josiah Child’s main deviations from free-market and laissez-faire doctrine was to agitate for one of the favorite programs of the mercantilists — to push the legal maximum rate of interest ever lower. Formerly discredited “usury laws” were making a comeback on faulty economic rather than natural-law or theological grounds. FULL ARTICLE by Murray N. Rothbard
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/14423/sir-josiah-child-false-friend-of-freedom/
Sir Josiah Child: False Friend of Freedom
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It’s me, or Rothbard really hates England?
I think it’s more that he disagrees both with the popular Mercantilism of 17th and 18th century England as well as the utilitarianism and various economic fallacies that arose in late 19th century England. What makes it even more troublesome for him is the Whig (and also Marxist) view of history, i.e. that the late 19th century ethics and economics must be superior to the earlier natural rights theory and economists such as Turgot and Bastiat purely because they came later in chronology.
By “England” you mean “the English”. Your generalization, being unqualifed, implies “all English”. But I do not believe that M.R. hated Herbert Spencer.
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