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{
"title": "The Law",
"authors": ["Frederic Bastiat"],
"publishdate": "1850-07-09",
"tags": ["Law"]
}
The law perverted! The law—and, in its wake, all the collective forces
of the nation—the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper
direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become
the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law
guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish!
Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel
bound to call the attention of my fellow citizens.
We hold from God the gift that, as far as we are concerned, contains
all others, Life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.
But life cannot support itself. He who has bestowed it, has entrusted
us with the care of supporting it, of developing it, and of
perfecting it. To that end, He has provided us with a collection of
wonderful faculties; He has plunged us into the midst of a variety of
elements. It is by the application of our faculties to these elements
that the phenomena of assimilation and of appropriation, by which life
pursues the circle that has been assigned to it are realized.
Existence, faculties, assimilation—in other words, personality,
liberty, property—this is man.
It is of these three things that it may be said, apart from all
demagogic subtlety, that they are anterior and superior to all human
legislation.
It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and
property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty,
and property exist beforehand, that men make laws. What, then, is
law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of
the indi¬ vidual right to lawful defense.
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