The Law

-cal rights: This completes the word "political" from the previous page. they either want to end legal plunder, or they aspire to take part in it.

Woe, triple woe to the nations where this latter thought dominates the masses at the moment they, in their turn, seize legislative power!

Until that time, legal plunder original: "spoliation légale." A central concept in Bastiat’s work, referring to the use of the law to take the property of some and give it to others—what we might today call "cronyism" or "redistribution." was practiced by the few against the many, as is seen among peoples where the right to legislate is concentrated in a few hands. But now it has become universal, and people seek balance in universal plunder. Instead of uprooting the injustice contained within society, it is made general. As soon as the disinherited classes recover their political rights, the first thought that seizes them is not to rid themselves of plunder (that would suppose in them a level of enlightenment original: "lumières." Referring to the intellectual progress and reason associated with the Enlightenment era. that they cannot yet possess), but to organize a system of reprisals against the other classes and to their own detriment—as if it were necessary, before the reign of justice arrives, for a cruel retribution to strike them all, some because of their iniquity, others because of their ignorance.

Therefore, there could not be introduced into Society a greater change or a greater evil—