The most obvious feature of this early Liberal movement is its neglect of economic questions, and its concentration upon the mere machinery of government. The science of political economy was indeed only in its infancy, and Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, published in 1776, had little effect upon practical politicians of any school until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Political argument was therefore conducted in these early stages very largely upon a theoretical basis, and Tories, Whigs, and Radicals contended as mightily about the abstractions of natural rights and sovereignty as the early Churches about the difference between Homoousion and Homoiousion. Almost the only practical grievances alleged against the old system were expensive wars and the maintenance of sinecures. The early Reformers, though the doctrine of _laissez faire_ was not formulated until half a century later, in fact believed it. They were in economics what the Whigs were in politics. They hated the interference of the executive, and they would probably have looked upon attempts to alter economic conditions as meddling, which would restrict the liberty of the citizen and increase the already dangerous influence of the Crown. This indifference, or rather hostility, to economic reforms was shared by all parties alike. Practically everybody agreed that it was a bad thing for Government to interfere with trade, though few went so far as to condemn the system of Protection. {102} Arthur Young disliked Government interference as an economist. "All restrictive forcible measures in domestic policy are bad."[101] Burke declared that his opinion was against "an overdoing of any sort of administration, and more especially against this most momentous of all meddling on the part of authority, the meddling with the subsistence of the people."[102] Adam Smith, in his _Wealth of Nations_ said that "According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to ... I. The duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; II. The duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and III. The duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain, because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society."[103] This was the general opinion of the manufacturers, and in 1806 it was embodied in a Parliamentary Report on industrial conditions: "The right of every man to employ the capital he inherits or has acquired according to his own discretion without molestation or obstruction, so long