Despite the lingering popularity of the idea of laissezfaire and the widely shared assumption that it was the prevailing view of most economists, for more than fi fty years the world’s leading practitioners of the profession had applied it only as, in the words of John Elliott Cairnes, a “handy rule of practice” with “no scientifi c basis what ever.” … In other words, laissezfaire was dead, and only the public had yet to know.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 12