Frédéric Bastiat

The work furnished by the Government was done at the expense of labour, paid for by the tax-payer.

Much is hoped from the future prosperity of Algeria; be it so. But the drain to which France is being subjected ought not to be kept entirely out of sight.

On the myth that “it is the superfluity of the rich which makes bread for the poor.”

It is an injustice to the tax-payers, who are made to pay a debt which is no concern of theirs.

“A curse on machines! Every year, their increasing power devotes millions of workmen to pauperism, by depriving them of work, and therefore of wages and bread. A curse on machines!”

Some persons consider that plunder is perfectly justifiable, if only sanctioned by law.

They would gladly suppress the capitalist, the banker, the speculator, the projector, the merchant, and the trader, accusing them of interposing between production and consumption, to extort from both, without giving either anything in return.

The State opens a road, builds a palace, straightens a street, cuts a canal; and so gives work to certain workmen — this is what is seen: but it deprives certain other workmen of work, and this is what is not seen.

If they take one direction, it is only because they have been diverted from another.

It is nonsense to say that the Government officer will spend these hundred sous to the great profit of national labour; the thief would do the same; and so would James B., if he had not been stopped on the road by the extra-legal parasite, nor by the lawful sponger.

You do not see that to dismiss a hundred thousand soldiers is not to do away with a million of money, but to return it to the tax-payers.

What would become of the glass makers, if nobody ever broke windows?