It is not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic.  It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive exercise of his faculties, applied to his physical, intellectual, and moral development; it is required to extend well-being, instruction, and morality, directly over the nation. This is the fascinating side of socialism.

But… these two missions of the law contradict each other. We have to choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.  Mr. de Lamartine wrote to me one day thus: “your doctrine is only half of my program; you have stopped at liberty, I go on to fraternity.”  I answered him: “The second part will destroy the first.” And in fact it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from voluntary.  I cannot possibly conceive fraternity legally enforced, without liberty being legally destroyed, and justice legally trampled underfoot. Legal plunder has two roots: one of them … is human greed; the other is misconceived philanthropy.

From The Law By Frederic Bastiat first published in 1850

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