Frédéric Bastiat：Economic Sophisms, Excerpt 274

Yet this circumstance--that is to say, the non-reimbursement in the first case, and the reimbursement voluntarily agreed upon in the second--establishes betwixt them such a difference that it is really impossible to class them in the same category. To hand over a hundred pounds by force to a man who has caught you by the throat, or to hand them over voluntarily to a man who furnishes you with what you want, are things as different as light and darkness. You might as well assert that it is a matter of indifference whether you throw your bread into the river, or eat it, for in both cases the bread is destroyed. The vice of this reasoning, like that applied to the word tribute, consists in asserting an entire similitude between two cases, looking only at their points of resemblance, and keeping out of sight the points in which they differ.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44145
Locator：Excerpt 274 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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