Frederic Bastiat's The Law

Reading the paper this morning I came across a letter to the editor in which the writer mentioned The Law by Frederic Bastiat.  He was a French legislator in the mid 19th century.  Apparently it is a phamplet of 75 pages.  Has anyone out there read it?  I have seen a little online and would like to read it, I think.  Oh, the writer of the letter in the paper felt that all our representatives should have a copy!

rww's picture

rww says:

My copy has only 58 pages. I hope I'm not missing part of it!  My guess is that Ron Paul is the only representative that has read anything by Bastiat.

You can access all of Bastiat's works online here.

Here is a quote from the book.

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.

 

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