The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. - Frédéric Bastiat

Legal plunder has two roots: one of them, as we have already seen, is in human greed; the other is in misconceived philanthropy.

Allow the State, which is the same thing as force, to interfere on one side or the other, and from that moment all the means of evaluation will be complicated and entangled, instead of becoming clear. It ought to be the part of the State to prevent, and, above all, to repress artifice and fraud; that is, to secure liberty, and not to violate it.

We demand from the law the right to relief, which is the poor man's plunder. To obtain this right, we also should be voters and legislators in order that we may organize Beggary on a grand scale for our own class, as you have organized Protection on a grand scale for your class.