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Proof of an Idea
And does not experience prove this? Look at the entire
world. Which countries contain the most peaceful, the most
moral, and the happiest people? Those people are found in the
countries where the law least interferes with private affairs;
where government is least felt; where the individual has the
greatest scope, and free opinion the greatest influence; where
administrative powers are fewest and simplest; where taxes are
lightest and most nearly equal, and popular discontent the least
excited and the least justifiable; where individuals and groups
most actively assume their responsibilities, and, consequently,
where the morals of admittedly imperfect human beings are con-
stantly improving; where trade, assemblies, and associations are
the least restricted; where labor, capital, and populations suffer
the fewest forced displacements; where mankind most nearly fol-
lows its own natural inclinations; where the inventions of men are
most nearly in harmony with the laws of God; in short, the hap-
piest, most moral, and most peaceful people are those who most
nearly follow this principle: Although mankind is not perfect,
still, all hope rests upon the free and voluntary actions of persons
within the limits of right; law or force is to be used for nothing
except the administration of universal justice.
The Desire to Rule over Others
This must be said: There are too many “great” men in the
world—legislators, organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the peo-
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ple, fathers of nations, and so on, and so on. Too many persons
place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organiz-
ing it, patronizing it, and ruling it.
Now someone will say: “You yourself are doing this very
thing.”
True. But it must be admitted that I act in an entirely dif-
ferent sense; if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is
solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone.
I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his
automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human
body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to
study and admire.
My attitude toward all other persons is well illustrated by
this story from a celebrated traveler: He arrived one day in the
midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A
crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks—armed with rings,
hooks, and cords—surrounded it. One said: “This child will
never smell the perfume of a peace-pipe unless I stretch his nos-
trils.” Another said: “He will never be able to hear unless I draw
his ear-lobes down to his shoulders.” A third said: “He will never
see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes.” Another said: “He will
never stand upright unless I bend his legs.” A fifth said: “He will
never learn to think unless I flatten his skull.”
“Stop,” cried the traveler. “What God does is well done. Do
not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this
frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use,
experience, and liberty.”
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Let Us Now Try Liberty
God has given to men all that is necessary for them to
accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well
as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so con-
stituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the
clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers!
Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with
their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental
administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization,
their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their
free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their
restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious mor-
alizations!
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely
inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end
where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and
try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and
His works.
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Afterword
Sheldon Richman
The state is that great fiction by which everyone
tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
—Frederic Bastiat
Frederic Bastiat holds a special place in the hearts and
minds of the friends of liberty. There is no mystery here to be
solved. The key to Bastiat’s appeal is the integrity and elegance of
his message. His writing exhibits a purity and a reasoned passion
that are rare in the modern world. He always wrote to be under-
stood, to persuade, not to impress or to obfuscate.
Through the device of the fable, Bastiat deftly shattered the
misconceptions about economics for his French contempo-
raries. When today, in modern America, we continue to be told,
by intellectuals as well as by politicians, that the free entry of 
foreign-made products impoverishes us or that destructive
earthquakes and hurricanes create prosperity by creating
demand for rebuilding, we are seeing the results of a culture
ignorant of Frederic Bastiat.
But to think of Bastiat as just an economist is to insuffi-
ciently appreciate him. Bastiat was a legal philosopher of the
first rank. What made him so is The Law. Writing as France was
being seduced by the false promises of socialism, Bastiat was
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Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty.
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concerned with law in the classical sense; he directs his reason to
the discovery of the principles of social organization best suited
to human beings.
He begins by recognizing that individuals must act to main-
tain their lives. They do so by applying their faculties to the nat-
ural world and transforming its components into useful prod-
ucts. “Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality,
liberty, property—this is man,” Bastiat writes. And since they are
at the very core of human nature, they “precede all human leg-
islation, and are superior to it.” Too few people understand that
point. Legal positivism, the notion that there is no right and
wrong prior to the enactment of legislation, sadly afflicts even
some advocates of individual liberty (the utilitarian descendants
of Bentham, for example). But, Bastiat reminds us, “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.”
For Bastiat, law is a negative. He agreed with a friend who
pointed out that it is imprecise to say that law should create jus-
tice. In truth, the law should prevent injustice. “Justice is
achieved only when injustice is absent.” That may strike some
readers as dubious. But on reflection, one can see that a free and
just society is what results when forcible intervention against
individuals does not occur; when they are left alone.
The purpose of law is the defense of life, liberty, and prop-
erty. It is, says Bastiat, “the collective organization of the indi-
vidual right of lawful defense.” Each individual has the right to
defend his life, liberty, and property. A group of individuals,
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therefore, may be said to have “collective right” to pool their
resources to defend themselves. “Thus the principle of collective
right—its reason for existing, its lawfulness—is based on individ-
ual right. And this common force that protects this collective
right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mis-
sion than that for which it acts as a substitute.” If the very pur-
pose of law is the protection of individual rights, then law may not
be used—without contradiction—to accomplish what individuals
have no right to do. “Such a perversion of force would be . . . con-
trary to our premise.” The result would be unlawful law.
A society based on a proper conception of law would be
orderly and prosperous. But unfortunately, some will choose
plunder over production if the former requires less effort than
the latter. A grave danger arises when the class of people who
make the law (legislation) turns to plunder. The result, Bastiat
writes, is “lawful plunder.” At first, only the small group of law-
makers practices legal plunder. But that may set in motion a
process in which the plundered classes, rather than seeking to
abolish the perversion of law, instead strive to get in on it. “It is
as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for
everyone to suffer a cruel retribution—some for their evilness,
and some for their lack of understanding.”
The result of generalized legal plunder is moral chaos pre-
cisely because law and morality have been set at odds. “When
law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel
alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect
for the law.” Bastiat points out that for many people, what is legal
is legitimate. So they are plunged into confusion. And conflict.
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As long as it is admitted that the law may be
diverted from its true purpose—that it may violate
property instead of protecting it—then everyone will
want to participate in making the law, either to protect
himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Politi-
cal questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and
all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the
Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no
less furious.
Sound familiar?
Bastiat finds another motive—besides the desire for booty—
behind legal plunder: “false philanthropy.” Again, he sees a con-
tradiction. If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and
justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken
from its owner. He applies that analysis to all forms of govern-
ment intervention, from tariffs to so-called public education.
Bastiat’s words are as fresh as if they were written today. He
explains that one can identify legal plunder by looking for laws
that authorize that one person’s property be given to someone
else. Such laws should be abolished “without delay.” But, he
warns, “the person who profits from such law will complain bit-
terly, defending his acquired rights,” his entitlements. Bastiat’s
advice is direct: “Do not listen to this sophistry by vested inter-
ests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder
into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The pre-
sent-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the
expense of everyone else.”
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The world view that underlies the distortion of law, Bastiat
writes, holds man as a passive entity, lacking a motor of his own
and awaiting the hand and plan of the wise legislator. He quotes
Rousseau: “The legislator is the mechanic who invents the
machine.” Saint-Just: “The legislator commands the future. It is
for him to will the good of mankind. It is for him to make men
what  he wills them to be.” And the razor-sharp Robespierre:
“The function of government is to direct the physical and moral
powers of the nation toward the end for which the common-
wealth has come into being.”
Bastiat echoes Adam Smith’s condemnation of the “man of
system,” who sees people as mere pieces to be moved about a
chessboard. To accomplish his objectives, the legislator must
stamp out human differences, for they impede the plan. Forced
conformity (is there any other kind?) is the order of the day. Bas-
tiat quotes several writers in this vein, then replies:
Oh, sublime writers! Please remember some-
times that this clay, this sand, and this manure which
you so arbitrarily dispose of, are men! They are your
equals! They are intelligent and free human beings
like yourselves! As you have, they too have received
from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to
think, and to judge for themselves!
After quoting several of those writers who are so willing to
devote themselves to reinventing people, Bastiat can no longer
control his outrage: “Ah, you miserable creatures! You think you
are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who
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wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves?
That would be sufficient enough.”
Nor does Bastiat allow unrestrained democracy to escape
his grasp. With his usual elegance, he goes right to the core of
the issue. The democrat hails the people’s wisdom. In what does
that wisdom consist? The ability to pick all-powerful legisla-
tors—and that is all. “The people who, during the election, were
so wise, so moral, so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever;
or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward to
degradation. . . . If people are as incapable, as immoral, and as
ignorant as the politicians indicate, then why is the right of these
same people to vote defended with such passionate insistence?”
And “if the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is
not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies
of these organizers are always good?”
Bastiat closes his volume with a clarion call for freedom and
a rejection of all proposals to impose unnatural social arrange-
ments on people. He implores all “legislators and do-gooders
[to] reject all systems, and try liberty.”
In the years since The Law was first published, little has
been written in the classical liberal tradition that can approach
its purity, its power, its nearly poetic quality. Alas, the world is far
from having learned the lessons of The Law. Bastiat would be
saddened by what America has become. He warned us. He iden-
tified the principles indispensable for proper human society and
made them accessible to all. In the struggle to end the legalized
plunder of statism and to defend individual liberty, how much
more could be asked of one man?
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Athens, 40
Blanc, Louis, 57–58, 61, 65, 70, 72
Bossuet, Jacques-Benigne, 33–35, 38
Capital, 4
Charity, 27, 69
Choice, freedom of, 64
Communism, 23, 70
Competition, 61
Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 49, 50
Conformity, 45
Democracy and/or democrats, 42,
59–60, 63
Despotism, 51, 56, 61
Dictatorship, 49, 53, 54, 55
Dignity, 73
Economics, 51, 59, 61, 62, 66, 67–68
Education, 18, 24, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34,
62, 67 
Egyptians, 33–38, 50
Equality, 48, 66, 72
Excluded classes, 13–14
Fenelon, Francois de Salignac,
36–38, 56
Fraternity, 21, 29, 71
Free choice, 64
French Revolution, 65
February Revolution of 
1848, 16
Government
force, 33, 64
functions, 1, 2, 3
power, 66
stability, 71
Greed, 5, 22, 71
Greeks, 11, 35, 50
History, 5, 6, 33
Individualism, 29
Industry, 66
Inequality, 27
Injustice, 7, 8, 15, 23, 25, 26, 27
Justice, 8–9, 19, 20–21, 22, 24–25,
26, 29, 71, 72, 74 
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Index
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Labor, 3, 6, 24, 33, 62
Law
consequences, 8
defined, 2, 3, 20 
force, 24–25
functions, 20, 68 
morality and, 8 
negative concept, 25 
perversion of, 4, 7, 8, 14, 20 
proper legislative functions, 68–69
Legislation, 7
Legislators, 32–33, 43, 45, 46–47,
59–61, 62–64, 68, 74, 76
Liberty, 21, 25, 51, 58, 59, 61–63, 66,
73, 75, 76
Living at the expense of others, 5
Lycurgus, 40, 41, 45, 49
Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de, 48, 49,
54, 56
Mentor, 37–39
Minimum wages, 18
Monopoly, 9, 10, 61, 66, 76
Montalembert, Charles, Comte de,
15–19 
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Sec-
ondat, 39, 42, 56
Morality, 6, 8, 9, 23, 28, 55 
Napoleon I, 56–57
Non-conformists, 9
Paraguay, 41
Paternalism, 34, 50
Philanthropy, 5, 21, 24, 52, 69, 70
Plato, 41
Plunder
defined, 22
illegal, 16, 19
legal, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 16, 17–20, 22,
23, 24, 27, 28 
property and, 6, 22
victims of, 7
Political science, 9–10
Politicians, 26, 30
Politics, 10, 67, 68
Population, 4
Poverty, 32
Power, 7, 58, 59, 66
Protectionism, 14, 18, 23–24
Progress, 73
Property, 1–2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14–15,
22, 25, 42, 69, 73
Regulation, 66
Relief, 14, 18, 27
Religion, 24, 28, 29 
Rights
acquired, 17
individual, 2, 72
political, 60
natural, 2, 3
Robespierre, Maximilien, 53, 54–56
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 10, 42–46,
52, 54, 56
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri, 57
Slavery, 5, 15
Socialism, 16, 18–19, 21, 23, 24, 29,
58, 61, 62
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Socialists, 19, 28, 30, 31–32, 37, 38,
45, 49, 53, 62, 64
Sparta, 40, 44, 50
Subsidies, 18, 27
Suffrage, 10, 11, 65
Superman idea, 63
Tariffs, 15, 18, 27, 62
Taxation, 18, 27
Telemachus (Fenelon), 36
Trade, 62, 66
United States, 15
Utopia of Salentum (Fenelon),
36
Virtue, 33, 54
War, 5
Writers, 30–31, 51 
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