The Law

our successes; but if unhappy, we would no more blame it for our reverses than our peasants attribute the hail or the frost to it. We would know it only by the inestimable benefit of SECURITY original: "SURETÉ." In this context, Bastiat refers to the protection of person and property from violence or fraud..

We can further assert that, thanks to the non-intervention of the State in private affairs, Wants and Satisfactions original: "Besoins et les Satisfactions." These are central terms in Bastiat's economic theory; he believed that in a free market, human needs and the means to satisfy them reach a natural, harmonious balance. would develop in their natural order. We would not see poor families seeking a literary education before having bread. We would not see cities populating at the expense of the countryside, or the countryside at the expense of the cities. We would not see those great shifts of capital, labor, and population provoked by legislative measures—shifts that make the very sources of existence so uncertain and precarious, and thereby aggravate the responsibility of governments to such a great extent.

Unfortunately, the Law is far from being confined to its proper role. It is even far from having deviated from it only in neutral and debatable ways. It has done worse: it has acted contrary to its own purpose; it has destroyed its own goal; it has been applied to annihilating that Justice which it ought to have made reign, and to erasing that limit between Rights original: "Droits." This refers to the natural rights of the individual that exist prior to any legislation. which its mission was to ensure respect for; it