Blagnet.net

Legal or moral?

My Mises Institute copy of The Law arrived today, and I couldn’t help but start reading it. It is my favorite political writing of all time, minarchist though it is. (If Bastiat had lived another decade or two instead of being taken at the age of 49 by tuberculosis, he would have ascended into anarchism.) But, whoever translated that version didn’t do quite as good of a job as Dean Russell of the Foundation for Economic Education; Russell’s is much more clear, forceful, and readable. So I couldn’t help but start reading his version again, and when you start The Law it’s hard to stop.

The only comment I wanted to make about it this time is: How many of your friends, colleagues, and acquaintances are perfectly described by this statement?

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.
—Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850)