The Law by {author}: summary and why it matters

What it argues

Bastiat starts from the idea that life, liberty and property precede law, and that people form government to defend them collectively as individuals may defend them alone. Law is therefore the organized common force for defending rights; it exceeds its purpose when it is used to take from one person and give to another.

He calls that taking legal plunder, and he argues it grows when any group, whether aristocrats, merchants or the many, uses the machinery of lawmaking for its own benefit. Once the law is used this way every class has an incentive to seize it, and politics turns into a struggle over spoils.

The pamphlet also attacks the planners of his day who wished to reorganize society, treating people as clay for the legislator. He answers with a simple test of whether an act would be a crime if done by a private person.

Why it matters

Bastiat's writing is vivid and brief, which has made it one of the most widely distributed introductions to free-market ideas. It gives conservatives and libertarians a moral test for subsidies, tariffs and transfers that is easy to apply.

It also illustrates a view that not all conservatives share: the idea that law's job is narrow and negative, not formative of virtue.

About the author

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist and member of the National Assembly who wrote satirical essays against protectionism, among them the petition of the candlemakers asking the government to block out the sun. He wrote The Law in the last year of his life, in the aftermath of the revolution of 1848, and he died of tuberculosis soon after.

Who should read it

A first book in political economy for teenagers and adults. It takes under an hour to read, and is worth keeping beside Hazlitt's longer lesson.