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....The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their
property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its
mission is to protect persons and property.
Furthermore, it must not be said that the law may be philanthropic if, in the
process, it refrains from oppressing persons and plundering them of their
property; this would be a contradiction. The law cannot avoid having an effect
upon persons and property; and if the law acts in any manner except to protect
them, its actions then necessarily violate the liberty of persons and their
right to own property.
The law is justice—simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see
it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and
unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this.
If you exceed this proper limit—if you attempt to make the law religious,
fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic—you will
then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a
forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize
the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and
philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where
will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?...
Excerpt from: The Law by Frédéric Bastiat [1850]
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