Review of “The Law”

By Frederic Bastiat, 58 pgs.

December 1, 2010

Amanda Powell

Business Law

Instructor: Mrs. Washington

 Review of “The Law”
Amanda Powell

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

“The Law” by Frederic Bastiat is a short and concise essay calling for the creation of

legal systems to rigorously guard the personal liberty and private property of all citizens, while

maintaining free – trade economies. Bastiat was a French writer and economist who served as a

lawmaker for a short time in the mid – nineteenth century. His beliefs in limited governmental

power and free markets have influenced many in the years since his death in 1850, and his

ideology of law as an instrument for property protection was shared by the authors of the United

States Constitution. Bastiat was raised by his grandparents and grew up working on a farm. As

an adult, he inherited the estate and hired workers to operate the family farm which allowed him

to live as a writer and scholar for the remainder of his life.1

Bastiat was, essentially, a business – owner. He was not a laborer for the majority of his

adult life. Put in the context of his experiences at the time, Bastiat’s views on the free market,

limited government interference in trade, and total personal liberty at the expense of social policy

are not entirely unexpected.

Legal Plunder

The author makes several references to the evils of legal plunder throughout “The Law.”

According to the text, plunder is defined as the transfer of a portion of wealth “from the person

who owns it – without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud –

to anyone who does not own it.” (Bastiat, pg. 17) This act may take the form of illegal theft, or it

may be the legal violation of property as allowed to the government by the laws. This sort of

legal plunder as defined by the author is a law created which “takes from some persons what
1
Bastiat was orphaned as a child and educated by his paternal grandparents. Upon the death of his grandfather he
inherited the family exporting business. (DiLorenzo)

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belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong,” and that which

“benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do

without committing a crime.” (Bastiat, pg. 13)

When the government incorporates legal plunder into the legal system, it seems to

become acceptable for people to lose respect for that system; not only for the laws that are

blatantly unfair to some, but also for other laws which may or may not be unjust. It causes people

to blur their line between right and wrong and to rationalize their immoral or illegal behavior.

Also, if legal plunder is taken too far, as in the concept of governing for total equality, any

country may experience the brain drain we are seeing in many socialist European countries

today. People will lose their ambition to succeed if their financial reward is taken away.

Morality in Law

There is a tendency to want to believe that the laws governing society are morally sound,

and sometimes people will accept laws and the legal system as an adequate substitute for their

own moral judgment; people will do what the law will allow them to get away with, without

having to feel guilty about their behavior. This seems to have been as true in Bastiat’s time as it

is today. During the political upheaval of the early nineteenth century in France, citizens looked

to the standing set of laws as guidelines for their behaviors and interactions in those tumultuous

times. In America today, the government is so entwined in the daily lives of its citizens that it is

difficult to separate the law’s morality from one’s own personal beliefs. Bastiat believed that

“the safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. 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.” Introducing those laws into society that force citizens to

reconsider their level of respect for the legal system is disheartening at best, and dangerous at

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worst; it “erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.”

(Bastiat, pg. 7)

Distortion of the Law

The author firmly believed that the one true purpose of the law is to protect the liberty

and property of its people. When the principles of property protection and free trade are

restricted or distorted, the government has overstepped its bounds as the negative concept for

which the purpose is to “prevent injustice from reigning over the land.” (Bastiat, pg. 19) This

sentiment holds true today, for when the capitalist economy demanded by the U.S. Constitution

is restricted, the results include monopolies in certain industries, and sometimes lower wages for

laborers. This creates a situation that is undeniably bad for American workers, and for our

standard of living in this country. Actually, the United States government as it operates today is

undoubtedly vastly different and much more powerful than the authors of the Constitution could

have foreseen. There are several laws and programs in place today that amount to legal plunder,

strictly speaking. The recent major bank bailouts and the pending health care reform are two

instances where the federal government is transferring money and resources from those who

earned them to those that did not, without the consent of taxpayers. The Social Security program

is another example of the transfer of money, without consent or compensation, from active

workers to retired workers. We have gun ownership restriction laws in this country which

directly violate our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. There are also new credit card laws taking

effect next year that will restrict the freedom of the banking industry to operate according to their

own company policies, which may have the undesired effect of limiting available credit to

consumers while simultaneously making it more expensive to obtain.

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Concepts Shared by Bastiat Influence America’s Founders

The now almost foreign concept of vigorously protecting personal property rights was

incorporated into the Constitution and Amendments III and IV because early Americans believed

the right to own and control property was one of the unalienable rights granted by God.

Following in the footsteps of the authors of the Magna Carta of 1215, the writers of the

Constitution wanted to make clear that no president, no ruler of any kind, could take away a free

person’s right to his own property.2 They referred not only to their own experiences, but also to

the histories of the societies of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Normans to build on their ideas

that maintaining property rights were central to any stable governmental system. Bastiat would

agree with this idea, because “the existence of persons and property precede the existence of the

legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.” (Bastiat, pg. 52) His earlier works

would refute this idea, but near the end of his life when he wrote “The Law,” Bastiat had adopted

the more radical libertarian belief that there is absolutely no justification for the taxing or seizing

of personal property, without consent and compensation, by the government.3 Bastiat also

believed, and history has proved him right, that socialistic governments breed economies that

stifle financial growth and personal wealth. He wrote that legislators have no right to regulate

trade and commerce; to “transfer tools of production to those who do not own them.” (Bastiat,

pg. 45)

In my research for this paper, I have learned that in the absence of a governmental system

which citizens perceive as stable, people seem to crave organization and order. Similar to the

way small children misbehave in search of stable boundaries from a parent, people without a

sense of law and order seem to seek safety in establishing a government that administers justice
2
(Shmoop Editorial Team)
3
In “The Tax Gatherer,” one of his earlier works, Bastiat concedes that certain taxes are acceptable to cover public
debt. By the time he wrote “The Law” he had shifted to the more radical position that taxation for public policy was
legal plunder. (Baugus)

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and fairness in the lease intrusive manner. In Bastiat’s environment, people overthrew or broke

away from several political leaders only to realign themselves with another. Americans fought

for and won independence from England only to waste no time in organizing their own

administrative system. Also, in contrast to what I had learned in the past, the founding fathers of

our Constitution quite likely set up the document assuming that the legal system in our country

would adapt and change with the times. I had previously been taught that the verbiage in the

Constitution were purposely designed to be set in stone and that the Supreme Court was

responsible to try to interpret the laws by the “original intent” of the authors.4 The more I read

about the circumstances surrounding the break from English rule and the influences of the

founding fathers, the more it makes sense to me that they were aware the legal system would

necessarily change with the times, and that it is the concepts of personal liberty and limited

national power that were meant to endure.

In crafting the Constitution, the founding fathers seem to have cultivated their philosophy

of good government mostly from their expansive knowledge of world history and from their own

experiences with the English legal system. They were well – read in history, but also were

known to “favor political writings, mostly those of seventeenth and eighteenth century British

writers.” (McDonald) They read the works of John Locke, Henry St. John, Viscount

Bolingbroke, and Wolfius. These writers agreed that a limited government was best, with an

emphasis on personal liberty and property protection.5 Generally, the fathers also agreed with

Bastiat’s libertarian ideology, but one idea they rejected was the author’s notion that people are

inherently selfish, or that they will resort to plunder or immorality when those options are easier

than work. Bastiat wrote that although people are not usually evil or stupid, there is a “fatal

4
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the founders intended to promote active democracy by setting
up institutions whereby citizens could allow the Constitution to evolve over time. (Shmoop Editorial Team)
5
(McDonald)

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tendency of mankind” (Bastiat, pg. 48) to avoid work if legal plunder is possible, because we are

“naturally inclined to avoid pain.” (Bastiat, pg. 5) The authors of the Constitution, however,

chose to believe that people are basically good, based on Locke’s tabula rasa theory.6

Governance with Optimism

Bastiat writes a convincing essay, and his opinions on economics and property rights

have stood the test of time, however I will have to side with the founding fathers on this last

point. The fundamental beliefs that people are good, and strive to be honest and moral – this is

the basis of our system of government that is by the people, for the people. The Constitution

stipulates that the more involvement citizens have, the better the government will be because

people do strive to be good and moral. Despite any evidence to the contrary, I would choose to

believe this also; I am sure this is a better way to build a government than to begin with the

premise that your fellow citizens are, ultimately, less than well – intentioned.

Works Cited

6
John Locke’s idea was that people are not born good or evil, but can develop either way. (McDonald)

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Bastiat, Frederic. “The Law – The Classic Blueprint for a Free Society.” 58 pages. Foundation

for Economic Education. Copyright 2007.

Baugus, Brian. “Frederic Bastiat: Libertarian Challenger or Political Bargainer?”

Independent.org. The Independent Review, 2008. Web 06 Dec 2009.

DiLorenzo, Thomas J. “Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850): Between the French and Marginalist

Revolutions.” Mises.org. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006. Web 07 Dec 2009.

Krey, Patrick. “Bastiat, Barack, and Bail-Outs.” JBS.org. The John Birch Society, 2009. Web 07

Dec 2009

McDonald, Forrest. “A Founding Father’s Library.” Libertyfund.com. Liberty Fund, Inc., 2005.

Web 06 Dec 2009.

Shmoop Editorial Team. “Ideology in Making the Constitution.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop

University, Inc., 11 Nov 2008. Web 07 Dec 2009.

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