[BOBT12]

THE LAW

By Fredric Bastiat (1801 to 1850)

The Book and Author
The Translation
Other Credits
Other Notes
Table of Contents
Life Is a Gift from God
What Is Law?
A Just and Enduring Government
The Complete Perversion of the Law
A Fatal Tendency of Mankind
Property and Plunder
Victims of Lawful Plunder
The Results of Legal Plunder
The Fate of Non-Conformists
Who Shall Judge?
The Reason Why Voting Is Restricted
The Answer Is to Restrict the Law
The Fatal Idea of Legal Plunder
Perverted Law Causes Conflict
Slavery and Tariffs Are Plunder
Two Kinds of Plunder
The Law Defends Plunder
How to Identify Legal Plunder
Legal Plunder Has Many Names
Socialism Is Legal Plunder
The Choice Before Us
The Proper Function of the Law
The Seductive Lure of Socialism
Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty
Plunder Violates Ownership
Three Systems of Plunder
Law Is Force
Law Is a Negative Concept
The Political Approach
The Law and Charity
The Law and Education
The Law and Morals
A Confusion of Terms
The Influence of Socialist Writers
The Socialists Wish to Play God
The Socialists Despise Mankind
A Defense of Compulsory Labor
A Defense of Paternal Government
The Idea of Passive Mankind
Socialists Ignore Reason and Facts
Socialists Want to Regiment People
A Famous Name and an Evil Idea
A Frightful Idea
The Leader of the Democrats
Socialists Want Forced Conformity
Legislators Desire to Mold Mankind
Legislators Told How to Manage Men
A Temporary Dictatorship
Socialists Want Equality of Wealth
The Error of the Socialist Writers
What Is Liberty?
Philanthropic Tyranny
The Socialists Want Dictatorship
Dictatorial Arrogance
The Indirect Approach to Despotism
Napoleon Wanted Passive Mankind
The Vicious Circle of Socialism
The Doctrine of the Democrats
The Socialist Concept of Liberty
Socialists Fear All Liberties
The Superman Idea
The Socialists Reject Free Choice
The Cause of French Revolutions
The Enormous Power of Government
Politics and Economics
Proper Legislative Functions
Law and Charity Are Not the Same
The High Road to Communism
The Basis for Stable Government
Justice Means Equal Rights
The Path to Dignity and Progress
Proof of an Idea
The Desire to Rule Over Others
Let us Now Try Liberty

The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.

{TLP note: All the italicized words and parenthetical expressions were supplied by the Author; all the subheadings and bracketed material were supplied by the Translator.}

Life Is a Gift from God

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life - physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production - in other words, individuality, liberty, property - this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

What Is Law?

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right - from God - to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right - its reason for existing, its lawfulness - is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force - for the same reason - cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

A Just and Enduring Government

If a nation were founded on this basis, it seems to me that order would prevail among the people, in thought as well as in deed. It seems to me that such a nation would have the most simple, easy to accept, economical, limited, non-oppressive, just, and enduring government imaginable - whatever its political form might be.

Under such an administration, everyone would understand that he possessed all the privileges as well as all the responsibilities of his existence. No one would have any argument with government, provided that his person was respected, his labor was free, and the fruits of his labor were protected against all unjust attack. When successful, we would not have to thank the state for our success. And, conversely, when unsuccessful, we would no more think of blaming the state for our misfortune than would the farmers blame the state because of hail or frost. The state would be felt only by the invaluable blessings of safety provided by this concept of government.

It can be further stated that, thanks to the non-intervention of the state in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop themselves in a logical manner. We would not see poor families seeking literary instruction before they have bread. We would not see the great displacements of capital, labor, and population that are caused by legislative decisions.

The sources of our existence are made uncertain and precarious by these state-created displacements. And, furthermore, these acts burden the government with increased responsibilities.

The Complete Perversion of the Law

But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and