To sum up, I reject the commission’s draft because it is just an expedient, and the character of any expedient is weakness and injustice.

Frédéric Bastiat
Pamphlets
Part 3

As a conclusion, Frédéric Bastiat reverts back to the principles that make him a man hungry of freedom and justice. It is easy to see here that his defense of the right to go on strike (being against the repression of “coalitions” – which is a euphemism to describe any workers assembly) comes from his thoughts about what is justice. It is not a political defense of the workers in the hope of being elected by them.

As he will explain six months later in his indispensable pamphlet The Law, it is even more important to fight against injustice than searching what is justice. As a man with integrity, he will therefore vote against a new legislation that would create an injustice by targeting something else than what it says it would (in the present case, to ban industrial unions under the pretext of forbidding violence during workers’ strikes).

Other quotes from the Speech on the Repression of Industrial Unions:
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3