When Colbert assembled some wise old merchants of France, and desired their advice and opinion, how he could best serve and promote commerce, their answer, after consultation, was, in three words only, _Laissez-nous faire_: "Let us alone." It is said by a very solid writer of the same nation, that he is well advanced in the science of politics, who knows the full force of that maxim. _Pas trop gouverner_: "Not to govern too much!" _which, perhaps, would be of more use when applied to trade, than in any other public concern_. (Present editors' italics.) Laissez faire in Franklin's as in Whately's view tended to be synonymous with free trade. Laissez faire was suggested by his insistence on free trade, as he progressively expressed his antipathy for mercantilism, rather than that free trade was simply a natural deduction from a more inclusive economic-political dogma. Writing to the pro-colonial Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, whose "sweet Retirement" at Twyford he had long enjoyed, Franklin, seeing no hopes of a reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain, uttered what marked him as the first American disciple of Quesnay's school of economic thought: "Agriculture is the great Source of Wealth and Plenty. By cutting off our Trade you have thrown us _to the Earth_, whence like _Antaeus_ we shall rise yearly with fresh Strength and Vigour."[i-219] Upon learning of the colonists' "Resolutions of Non-Importation" he wrote to "Cousin" Folger that they must promote their own industries, especially those of the "Earth and their Sea, the true Sources of Wealth and Plenty."[i-220] Learning that the colonists had threatened to boycott English manufacturers by creating their own basic industries, Franklin demurred in a letter to Cadwallader Evans: "Agriculture is truly _productive of new wealth_; manufacturers only change forms, and whatever value they give to the materials they work upon, they in the mean time consume an equal value in provisions, &c. So that riches are not _increased_ by manufacturing; the only advantage is, that provisions in the shape of manufactures are more easily carried for sale to foreign markets."[i-221] _Positions to be Examined, Concerning National Wealth_[i-222] affords a succinct statement of Franklin's agrarianism. "There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by _war_, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbours. This is _robbery_. The second by _commerce_, which is generally _cheating_. The third by _agriculture_, the only _honest way_, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favour, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry."[i-223] Dupont de Nemours, as early as 1769, had written: "Who does not know that the English have today their Benjamin Franklin, who