‘Life, liberty and property,’ Frederic Bastiat wrote in his small, but monstrous book The Law, ‘do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws.’
Law was created to protect its creator – the individual. It is meant to be the servant to the individual, not the master.
Bastiat understood this. He warned of what type of nation would eventually arise if man continued to take a backseat to the law. And what a tangled web we would weave if the law was allowed to be corrupted unfettered. (And look at us now.)
When the law no longer serves the people, as individuals, the law begins to serve only a few at the great expense of the many.
‘Unfortunately,’ Bastiat wrote, ‘law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this: it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose.’
This post was published at Laissez Faire on May 20, 2016.
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