… is from David Hart’s splendid 2019 translation – still only on-line, but forthcoming in print – of Frédéric Bastiat’s 1850 Economic Harmonies; specifically, it’s from Chapter XX, titled “Responsibility”:
Before subjecting an action or habit to organized repression, the following question always has to be asked:
Does this extra benefit, obtained by the addition of legal repression to natural repression, compensate for the evil inherent in the apparatus of repression?
DBx: Bastiat was born, in Bayonne, on (or near) this date in 1801.
