What is a law?” said he to himself. “It is a measure to which, when once it is decreed, be it good or bad, everybody is bound to conform. For the exe… - Frédéric Bastiat
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What is a law?” said he to himself. “It is a measure to which, when once it is decreed, be it good or bad, everybody is bound to conform. For the execution of the same a public force is organized, and to constitute the said public force, men and money are drawn from the whole nation.
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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Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, 12everybody will be wanting to manufacture law,
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. What are the consequences of such a perversion? ... In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice...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.
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But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence.
