Student's Perspective
Law and government are two words that have completely different definitions yet correlate with one another when it comes to the topic of governing countries, states, etc. In a college students’ perspective or rather definition, the purpose of law is to establish standards, maintain order, and ensure justice in cases of right and wrong. Law has many detailed aspects to its purpose in general, all of which I cannot explain today, but to obtain and implement these laws, they must be first established in our system called the government. The purpose of the government, again in a student perspective, is to ensure the well-being of humanity as well as protect us from outside forces and provide essential services that ensure our rights, justices, peace, and happiness are all taken care of. The government is a body of people whom we are to put our trust in and believe that they provide us with solutions to everyday concerns.
The Government
In Claude Frederic Bastiat’s collection, “The Bastiat Collection (2011),” it mentioned and is shown that he had a different take on the purpose of law and government in an observation and perspective of the French government. In this collection of literature, in the section of the government, Bastiat overall mentions that the government is
“…a mysterious personage; and assuredly, it is the most solicited, the most tormented, the most overwhelmed, the most admired, the most accused, the most invoked, and the most provoked, of any personage in the world (Bastiat, 2011, p. 95).
I can agree that the government is a lot of things and has been called many different names by many people and at times, they can be overwhelming, accused often, tormented but they are also admired, trusted in and overall hopeful to some. While reading Frederic Bastiat’s collection, it occurred to me that he talked about the French government in a rather harsh and constructive way but also honest to the point where it seemed in what he was talking about could be applied and implemented in all governments aside from the French.
Each government has their own responsibilities, duties, and expectations of them from their people and is expected to meet their demands. According to Federic Bastiat, he records a lot of his observations of the French government and one observation that stood out to me was pertaining to how the government has “two hands” per say. He says,
“It has two hands – one to receive and the other to give; in other words, it has a rough hand and a smooth one. The activity of the second is necessarily subordinate to the activity of the first. Strictly, Government may take and not restore” (Bastiat, 2011, p. 102).
What is interesting about this observation was that it implies that governments resolve concerns and/or conflicts by taking and not necessarily restoring or providing back was taken previously. In doing this, I would imagine that this method does more harm than good in that it leaves whomever they take from in a bind to make up for what was lost or taken. This alone seems it would hurt not only the people the government take from but surrounding areas and the people as well.
What is also interesting in this observation is that this can be seen sometimes within our own government here in the United States, in that we as citizens do not always know what is exactly taken or “borrowed” on a day-to-day basis, but when it is noticed, concerns tend to rise, and mistrust elevates towards our governments and becomes a media frenzy. When this happens, the government then tends to make promises to raise hopes to bring back that trust and provide temporary solutions towards restoration just as Frederic Bastiat says in his collection “The Government.” In this collection Frederic Bastiat says,
“For between the government, which lavishes promises which it is impossible to perform, and the public, which has conceived hoped which can never be realized, two classes of men interpose – the ambitious and the Utopians” (Bastiat, 2011, p. 102).
The government is sought out to be a hopeful and promising body that provides security, ensure justice, ensure that the rights of the people are in place, provide solutions to the everyday concerns and well-being of the people. If providing temporary solutions or promising false hope is the only way towards restoration of what is taken, then we have a bigger concern on our hands.
The Law
In terms of the law, Frederic Bastiat mentions his perspective on the law and how it is thought of in his honest interpretation in his collection called “The Law.” Frederic Bastiat describes the law as this,
“The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign overall (Bastiat, 2011, p. 51).
If law were seemingly easy and defined as his interpretation, order, and the simplicity of establishing laws might prevail. We can often presume and observe that law is not always a beneficial factor when it comes to the rights of citizens and that it ensures humanity is at peace and hopeful that the concerns and problems that arise are being addressed.
With that being said, we can bring in the idea of legal plunder. In my previous portion of this essay, I mentioned the Government and how they sometimes provide temporary solutions towards restoration and in bringing in this idea, we can relate this to a concept called legal plunder in which Bastiat mentions in his collection. We can directly see and reference this idea by first knowing what legal plunder is and how it affects us as the people. To relate this to the government section of his collection, we oftentimes rely on the government to ensure that the laws made benefit the people and ensure security, justice, and service to the American people. In reading Bastiat’s take on legal plunder and based on my own understanding, legal plunder is the act or idea that the government can obtain or take money from those who have earned it or worked for it and turn around and give it to those that may not deserve it. Frederic Bastiat says this in his collection, “The Law,”
“When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by force or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is perpetrated. I say that this is exactly what the law ought to repress always and everywhere” (Bastiat, 2011, p. 62-63).
This act is seen and done “legally” per say yet ethically and morally, illegally in that based on this quotation, Bastiat is against legal plundering and emphasizes that it should be repressed and violates rights we have as humans.
In a more unofficial point of view, laws are made to ensure that that we can live our day to day lives without little to no concern, problems, chaos, or uncertainty. The creation of laws is not always the best solution as it can sometimes become a problem instead of solving one. In Frederic Bastiat’s collection, he states that the law,
“…is by no means confined to its own sphere. Nor is it merely in some ambiguous and debatable views that it has left its proper sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established, in effacing amongst Rights, that limit which it was its true mission to respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic, without risk and without scruple, in the persons, the liberty, and the property of others; it has converted plunder Into a right, that it may protect it… (Bastiat, 2011, p. 52).
As we can see, even in French law, the establishment in said laws are sometimes unlawful and used as a shield at times to show that doing the wrong thing is right and suffers no consequence.
Example of Law and Unlawful
In reading Bastiat’s “Petition of the Manufacturers of Candles, Wax lights, Lamps, Candlelight’s, Street Lamps, Snuffers, Extinguishers, and the Producers of Oil, Tallow, Resin, Alcohol, and, Generally, of Everything Connected with Lighting,” we can infer that he is offering a notion that the members pass a law,
“ ordering the shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormer-windows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull’s-eyes; in a word, of all openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which the light of the sun has been in use to enter houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our country…” (Bastiat, 2011, 228).
In his petition, or rather in this quote, Bastiat is opposing import tariffs and in my understanding is supporting free markets, trade, etc. and is essentially saying that tariffs would cause more harm than good.
As previously mentioned, laws are created by governments and oftentimes these said laws are not secure and rational as the government creates laws, they see fit instead of us, the people. Bastiat takes the route of explaining his petition and complaint on why a law should be passed to fix this issue. Frederic Bastiat was advocating for the use of natural light and in this whole ordeal we can see that in this government, they are passing and establishing laws that are not benefiting the people but rather raising concerns and problems in other ways. This all ties into the concept of law and how beneficial they can be and oftentimes are not. This also plays into the roles of the government and essentially adding onto the question of who the government is and what they do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the purpose of law and government is defined in many ways all boiling down to one’s perspective, experience and even opinion. We can see that Frederic Bastiat has a different opinion on law and government in that he talked about these topics in an honest and harsh way to get his point across in his collection of literature. Who is to say what is law and what is government as these both come with their own problems, concerns and often time solutions. The purpose of law and government is to establish solutions to protect our rights, freedoms, ensure justice, protect our peace, and offer stability to the people.
References
Bastiat Frédéric. (2011). Petition of the Manufacturers of Candles, Waxlights, Lamps, Candlelights, Street Lamps, Snuffers, Extinguishers, and the Producers of Oil,Tallow, Resin, Alcohol, and, Generally, of Everything Connected with Lighting. In The bastiat collection (pp. 227–232). essay, Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Bastiat Frédéric. (2011). Government. In The bastiat collection (pp. 95–107). essay, Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Bastiat Frédéric. (2011). The Law. In The bastiat collection (pp. 49–94). essay, Ludwig von Mises Institute.
When I was a kid I thought that law came from the government.
What is really bizarre is that law and government appear to have developed along different paths.
To a large extent the system of common law and its accompanying judiciary was developed by the people independent of the government.
This is why one often sees that countries with radically different governing structures often had similar legal structures.
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