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. Ther… - Frédéric Bastiat
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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.
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
Portrait from Wikimedia Commons. Credit: Émile Desmaisons. Lithograph by Auguste-Hilaire Léveillé.. Used under Public domain / CC0. Processed and styled by Quotewise.
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But when the legislator is finally elected — ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation.
And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world?
How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does not contain — prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science, religion — should ever have gained ground in the political world?
