Thanks to the Foundation for Economic Education you can read Frederic Bastiat's, The Law online.
Dr. Walter Williams says in the foreward that "Bastiat recognized that the greatest single threat to liberty is government."
The book opens with:
The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!
If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.
Read it all by clicking here for a pdf of the book.
