Not Locke, nor Hume, nor Smith, nor Burke, could have argued, as Bentham did, that every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty. Their argument was never a complete laissez faire argument, which, as the very words show, is also part of the French rationalist tradition and in its literal sense was never defended by any of the English classical economists. They knew better than most of their later critics that it was not some sort of magic, but the evolution of well constructed institutions, where the rules and privileges of contending interests and compromised advantages would be reconciled, that had successfully channeled individual efforts to socially beneficial aims. In fact, their argument was never antistate as such, or anarchistic, which is the logical outcome of the rationalistic laissez faire doctrine; it was an argument that accounted both for the proper functions of the state and for the limits of state action. Right on. "Proper functions," whodathunkit?
An objectivist totalibertarian would tend to try to grind this intuitively obvious idea down to meaninglessness. But "anti-state" doesn't quite give that view justice, to me. That view would set up government by state tribunal to inflict such an extreme version of "liberties" upon a people that it would severely oppress, in an inside-out fashion (until the inevitable coup rises from chaos, Rouseau begets Robespierre, as Ahrendt and Schaeffer point out).
he does quote another in saying "Gallican liberty is sought in
government...
This is a condition or contradiction I see for much of the rationalist approach.