From Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly, The Law (1850):
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.
Bastiat was truly thoughtful. My favorite passage, the one that serves as the basis for “The Law,” is: “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”