one of a school of political economists who followed Quesnay in holding that an inherent natural order properly governed society, regarding land as the basis of wealth and taxation, and advocating a laissez-faire economy.
a 19th-century theory, inspired by Darwinism, by which the social order is accounted as the product of natural selection of those persons best suited to existing living conditions and in accord with which a position of laissez-faire is advocated.
