Who said it? What did he/she mean? 4/10/07

[Shooterman]

"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve... But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic."

"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder."

[Chrisj]

The Law by Frederick Bastiat originally published in French in 1850.

The basis of his arguement is that the state is overstepping the bounds of what it can reasonably be expected to do. His premise is the state should only exist to protect the individual, his liberty and his property. The state has no right to remove from the individual what is rightfully his, meaning the fruits of his labour. Redistribution of wealth through taxation is an example of this. This leads to friction between those who make the laws and those who suffer from them, this leads to a cycle of hatred as those who have suffered take revenge on those who in his words have participated in legal plunder.

Its a bit more complex and long winded than this.