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If anyone would have told the good peasants of the Landes distriot in the early 1800's that their comical-looking fellow-farmer could ever be known outside of their tiny territory, he would have been greeted with derisive laughter. Of all disguises Fame could assume, she certainly could not have been better disguised than in the shape of this gawky-looking, long-haired, solemn-faced individual with the long frock, the small cap, and the rustic umbrella. The very sight of him provoked mirth.

He lived a retiring and provincial life, obscure and unknown, while France was seething with unrest and war. Constant civil strife had reduced this land of artistic achievement to intellectual rubble. On one side were the supporters of the existing state, who prattled about centralization, protection, and control, while on the other side were the Socialists, who clamored for centralization, solidarity, and control. The voice of liberty was silent.

Then, without the slightest notice, France was flooded with pamphlet after pamphlet in defense of individual freedom. The style was brilliant and original, the wit keen and penetrating.

Frederic Bastiat, aged forty-three, appeared out of nowhere and became famous overnight. His essays, fresh and sparkling, were subsequently collected in book form as Sophismes Economiques. Five years later, in 1850, appeared his other great classic, Harmonies Economiques. The flicker of genius burned bright; the applause grew deafening.

His moment of glory was all too brief. That same year, Henry Carey, the American economist, sued him for plagiarism. Soon, death struck down Bastiat in the prime of his life. Fame picked up her cloak and disappeared.

What is the gist of Bastiat's philosophy?

There is in the universe, he stated, a basic relation, a jus naturae: a natural law. All its manifestions are harmonious. Interference with the "harmonies" creates misery and suffering. In the natural scheme of things, even evil has its purpose. "Evil, far from being antagonistic to the good, in some mysterious way promotes it, while the good can never end in evil. In the final reckoning, the good must surely triumph."

Therefore, there is no basis for pessimism - if each person were but left alone to lead his own life. "If everyone would only follow his own interest, he would unwittingly find that he was advancing the interests of all."

It is ignorance of this enlightened self-interest that keeps mankind in shackles. In every phase of human activity, the individual is regulated by the State, particularly in the economic sphere. Every State "reform" is positively harmful, since it meddles with the workings of natural law. "Whenever the State undertakes to supply the wants of the individual, the individual himself loses his right of free choice, and becomes less progressive and less human; and, by and by, all his fellow citizens are infected with a similar moral indifference."

Laissez-faire is the only principle that works, for it clears the way for the individual, through the empiricism of competition, to stumble onto the right oath of natural law.

Contrary to socialistic teachings, rent, value, and interest do not represent exploitation. They are merely payments for services rendered. Therefore, landlords need not have any qualms about collecting rent. "You have not intercepted any of the gifts of God... You received them free out of nature's hand ... but ... you have handed them on freely, reserving nothing for yourselves. Fear not, but live in peace and freedom from every qualm."

Value is not determined by the quantity of labor necessary for production. Value is based "upon the amount of labor it saves the persons who obtain it."

Interest is payment for the use of capital, and is fully justified. A canoe means more fish caught, so the owner of the canoe is entitled to part of such haul in the form of interest.

Hence, if the State would but cease regulating rent, value, and interest, they would tend, in time, to be so distributed as to permit nearly all people to share in them equitably.

The Socialists, who do not understand economic harmonies, continuously demand total control of production. Their emphasis is all wrong. It is not the producer who "floods" the market. "The consumer is the ... source of any gain or loss which the producer makes or suffers… Consequently, every important question must be studied from the consumer's point of view if we want to get hold of its general and permanent results."

Both the Socialists and the vested interests clamor for protective tariffs. Bastiat's noted "Petition of the Candle-Makers" reduces protection to an absurdity.

In this fictional petition, the candle-makers, after bitterly complaining about the competition of a "foreign" rival, the sun, urgently beseech the legislature to "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 enters houses to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which, we flatter ourselves, we have accommodated our country -- a country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a strife so unequal."

"Higgling of the market," and not control, is the best "regulator." Freedom of trade, and not protection, is the best spur to production. Liberty, and not security, is the best goal of life.

Besides regulating trade, the State attempts to control population, contending that the increase of population results in poverty and starvation. The claim is spurious. On the contrary, the more people, the more production, as witness the progress of the centuries.

To the proud boast of the State, that it dispenses justice, there is but one answer: All that the State does is convert "plunder into a right," to efface "the distinction between justice and injustice." Furthermore, the State robs people "by means of taxation - that is, by force." Taxation is but a synonym for robbery.

Smug and patronizing statists justify their rule by contending "that men are devoid of any principle of action. Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it ... that the tendencies of organizers are always good?...I cannot possibly conceive fraternity legally enforced, without liberty being legally destroyed."

True solidarity is only a collection of individual "solidarities woven together." "Collective right has its lawfulness in individual rights," which are never wiped out.

Man can be happy only if he is free. "If everyone would look after his own affairs, God would look after everybody's...The solution of the social problem is in liberty."

Bastiat sleeps. France -- and the rest of the world -- is plunged in chaos and misery, and, characteristically, seeks refuge in more control. Forgotten is Bastiat, and forgotten is his celebrated question:

"So many things have we attempted! How is it that liberty, the easiest of all, has never been given a trial?"