Sir Josiah Child: False Friend of Freedom

Tags: Interventionism, Political Theory, Biographies, World History

10/29/2010 Murray N. Rothbard

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, writes Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995).

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