The principle of laissez-faire may be safely trusted to in some things but in many more it is wholly inapplicable; and to appeal to it on all occasions savors more of the policy of a parrot than of a statesman or a philosopher.

John Ramsay McCulloch (1848; 156), cited in: Roderick Floud, et al. (2014), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, Volume 1. p. 363