Researching the causes of suffering, tending to it with all remedies that are compatible with justice, this is a duty that is as sacred as maintaining order.
Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 255 to 262 (in French)
April 1849
In the wake of the parliamentary elections of 1849 at which he is a candidate (and will be elected), Frédéric Bastiat publishes this manifesto in which he reminds us of the actions he has been taking as a representative at the Constituant Assembly of 1848. Notable are all the works he conducted in view of shaping the public opinion and he lists all the major publications he has made over the previous twelve months:
- Individualism and Fraternity*
- Property and law
- Property and plunder
- Justice and Fraternity
- Capital and rent
- Protectionism and communism
- The State
- Parliamentary conflict of interest
- Damned money
- Peace and freedom, or the Republican Budget
Moreover, he also reminds us that he did everything possible in order to follow his conscience and did not vote according to a partisan agenda. He voted along the left or the right, depending on the topic being “to defend liberty and the republic” or “order and security”. Today’s quote is a good summary of his state of mind when he insists on justice and order guiding him in his quest against suffering.
We also learn that it is in the summer of 1848, around the June Days uprising, that he fell ill with tuberculosis, the disease that will kill him on December 24th, 1850.
* The editor Guillaumin cannot find a text with this title and puts forward the hypothesis that it pertains to the draft that is published in this very posthumous volume 7 of the Complete Work on page 328 (in French).