Mises Daily
Author:
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Online Publish Date:
[Originally published in 2003 as “Cobden on Freedom, Peace, and Trade,” a prize-winning essay in the Independent Institute’s Olive W. Garvey Fellowship contest.] Every student of political economy knows that Adam Smith dealt mercantilist economic ideas a profound intellectual defeat in The Wealth of Nations (1776). The mercantilist had viewed