I recently posted a series on Bastiat's essay, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen. That groundbreaking economics work was not his only publication of note in 1850 though. He also wrote a scathing and insightful deconstruction of popular political beliefs that needs to be better-known.

This work touches on economics, democracy, law, justice, and the principles of government in a manner that demands recognition. While his work is in the classical liberal minarchist framework, it contains the core ideas that persuaded me to reject even the mythical minimal state. As such, this book should be considered EXTREMELY DANGEROUS to your preconceptions about life, society, and the State.

As before, I will be serializing the work by posting a chapter once or twice a day for the next few days. I will continue to decline payouts on these chapters, and offer a comment that can be upvoted if you want to upvote something that directly rewards me.

Credit where credit is due: material will be copied from the translation shown on bastiat.org. Unlike That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, this work has translator credits which I will reproduce here:

This translation of The Law was done by Dean Russell of The Foundation [Foundation for Economic Education] staff. His objective was an accurate rendering of Mr. Bastiat's words and ideas into twentieth century, idiomatic English.

A nineteenth century translation of The Law, made in 1853 in England by an unidentified contemporary of Mr. Bastiat, was of much value as a check against this translation. In addition, Dean Russell had his work reviewed by Bertrand de Jouvenel, the noted French economist, historian, and author who is also thoroughly familiar with the English language.

While Mr. de Jouvenel offered many valuable corrections and suggestions, it should be clearly understood that Dr. Russell bears full responsibility for the translation.

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The Law

by Frédéric Bastiat

The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.

to be continued...

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