… is from page 8 of Joel Mokyr’s 2009 book The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850:
Much of the economic history of Britain during the period under discussion here cannot be properly understood without realizing that after the middle of the eighteenth century redistributive activities, inimical to economic development, were on the retreat. The attacks on mercantilism – which was the formal manifestation of rent-seeking – by liberal economists were one front on which this battle was fought.
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