Irza Fidah's Key Ideas from The Law by Frederic Bastiat
by Frederic Bastiat

Man can only derive life and enjoyment from a perpetual search and appropriation; that is, from a perpetual application of his faculties to objects, or from labor. This is the origin of property. But also he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the productions of the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin of plunder. 

The law is made, generally, by one man, or by one class of men. And as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of a preponderant force, it must finally place this force in the hands of those who legislate.

So that if a law exists that sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or plunder, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned—for how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect that it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught in connection with this law—that is, under the supposition that it must be just, only because it is law.

The law sometimes takes its own part. Sometimes it accomplishes it with its own hands, in order to save the parties benefited the shame, the danger, and the scruple. Sometimes it places all this ceremony of magistracy, police, gendarmerie, and prisons, at the service of the plunderer, and treats the plundered party, when he defends himself, as the criminal.

Liberty is power.

• In what does this power consist? In possessing education and tools of labor.
• Who is to give education and tools of labor? Society, who owes them.
• By whose intervention is society to give tools of labor to those who do not possess them? By the intervention of the State.
• From whom is the State to obtain them? It is for the reader to answer this question, and to notice whither all this tends.

Law is common force organized to prevent injustice;—in short, Law is Justice. 

Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice.