Ricardo, who in his Principles of Political Economy stated that capitalists had to depress wages in order to remain competitive. Underlying the views of all these economists was the idea that the economy is driven by laws and that state intervention would circumvent those laws and cause the situation to deteriorate (Noble, Strauss, Osheim, Neuschel, Cohen, and Roberts 528-529).
The political aspect of liberalism suggested that political power had to be limited to prevent despotism. In the eighteenth century, enlightened despots had claimed that their control was necessary to promote the public good. The Enlightenment had set forth "natural law" as the basis of government, and French liberals in the nineteenth century also saw human liberty as based on natural law. English liberals took a different view, such as that of Jeremy Bentham, who believed that the purpose of government was to provide the greatest good for the greatest number. There was some dispute over the value of democracy, however. Bentham and Mill saw democracy as a necessary component in achieving an effective government, but the French liberal Benjamin Constant denounced democracy. He believed that the vote should be retained only for the well-educated and well-off (Noble, Strauss, Osheim, Neuschel, Cohen, and Roberts 829-830).
The Enlightenment was the period in European thought characterized by an emphasis on experience and reason, with a mistrust of religion and traditional authority, and the gradual emergence of the ideals of liberal, secular, democratic societies. Inherent in the development of liberal thought was a belief in the power of reason, the application of human thought to issues so that the underlying forces could be discerned, understood, and explained. The classical liberal school developed views on individualism, freedom, power, contract, and the role of government based on the application of reason to human affairs, always in the beli...