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Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness the other is in false philanthropy.

Frederic Bastiat

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Frederic Bastiat
Age: 49 †
Born: 1801
Born: June 30
Died: 1850
Died: December 24
Economist
Essayist
Magistrate
Philosopher
Politician
Baiona
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
Humans
Legal
False
Roots
Morality
Seen
Justice
Plunder
Two
Philanthropy
Human
Selfishness

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Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.
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The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.
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...the statement, The purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign, is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.
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No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).
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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
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The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.
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When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
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Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.
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Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
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If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
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If everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.
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When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
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If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.
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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?
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They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.
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Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
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Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
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It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.
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When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.
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The impulses of my heart are the voice of Nature, which is never mistaken. The institutions that stand in my way are man-made and are only arbitrary conventions to which I have never given my consent. In trampling these institutions underfoot, I shall have the double pleasure of satisfying my inclinations and of believing myself a hero
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