Wednesday, March 16, 2005
If you make the law the palladium of the freedom and the property rights of all citizens, and if it is nothing but the organization of their individual rights to legitimate self-defense, you will establish on a just foundation a rational, simple, economical government, understood by all, loved by all, useful to all, supported by all, entrusted with a perfectly definite and very limited responsibility, and endowed with unshakeable solidity.
— Frédéric Basitat, “Plunder and Law” [1850] from Selected Essays
on Political Economy (Foundation for Economic Education, 1995)
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