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Curiously enough, although he reports the clearly much earlier usage by Boisguillebert (or
Boisguilbert) of "laissez faire la nature et la liberte," Schumpeter later in his great
work (p. 244, footnote 2) makes the following remark regarding de Gournay:
 
"But his greatest services to economics are by no means easy to characterize.  They are
not embodied in publications (he wrote reports, though, and also notes to translations of
English economic works).  Nor are his letters and various utterances (one of which has
become famous: [italics] laissez faire, laissez passer [end italics] has been attributed
to him) adequate to convey what he means to the history of our science."
 
Schumpeter does not further elucidate who did this attributing or when or where, and makes
no note at this point of the clearly earlier attribution by him to Boisguillebert,
although of course "laissez faire, laissez passer" is not exactly the same as "laissez
faire la nature et la liberte," nor does he remark on the accuracy of the attribution.
Schumpeter does not mention Le Gendre, Colbert, d'Argenson, Mirabeau, d'Albon, or Dupont
de Nemours at all in connection with the phrase.  He never spells it as the two
infinitives in any of his discussion of the phrase.
 
Barkley Rosser 
 
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