What Is Liberty? Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is t… - Frédéric Bastiat
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What Is Liberty? Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties — liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism — including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self- defense; of punishing injustice?
Frédéric Bastiat (30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was an early free-market economist and classical liberal French author.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Émile Desmaisons. Lithograph by Auguste-Hilaire Léveillé. (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
•
Frederic Bastiat
When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law — two evils of equal magnitude, between which it would be difficult to choose.
When legislators, after having ruined men by war and taxes, persevere in their idea, they say to themselves, “If the people suffer, it is because there is not money enough. We must make some.” And as it is not easy to multiply the precious metals, especially when the pretended resources of prohibition have been exhausted, they add, “We will make fictitious money, nothing is more easy, and then every citizen will have his pocket-book full of it, and they will all be rich.
"The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them."
