BOOK REVIEW - Frederic Bastiat "The law" By Mara Pepine Lately,  all around us, there is talk of tariffs,  subsidies,  and embargoes.  The markets grow less and less free each day and those who would see our economic life freed from the influence of government grow more and more worried. About 300 years ago in France, in the midst of an emerging socialist and communist doctrine, one French political philosopher took it upon himself to make his contemporaries look around and realise that the circular thinking in which they were trapped was preventing them from achieving true freedom.  This  philosopher was Frédéric Bastiat. In his short essay, The Law, published in 1850, he presents simply and elegantly some of the most important concepts of classical liberal thinking. His work is considered a very valuable resource and has served as an important inspiration to many similarly inclined authors.  Exploring  Bastiat’s ideas today might prove to be the needed impulse to make the radical changes he so wished for.