19th Century
Frédéric Bastiat
1801–1850 · Classical liberalism
Government cannot give anything it has not taken first.
In their words
“The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.”
The Law dismantled the plunder state in a few pages: law exists to secure person, property and liberty, and when it turns to redistribution it becomes the sanction for theft and the seed of class war. His economy of the seen and the unseen remains the clearest test for legislation, judging it by what it prevents rather than by what it promises.
Why it matters for freedom
He made legalized plunder visible, showing that theft does not become virtue by passing a law.
Who they stood against
protectionism, subsidy, and the politicians who sold both as generosity