“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”Frédéric Bastiat · Legea · 1850 · paragraful 33
An immoral law forces a choice: your conscience or its authority.
Bastiat identifies a hidden cost of immoral legislation: it does not merely commit an injustice, it erodes either citizens' morality or the law's authority. If you accept that the law can steal, you learn that stealing is acceptable when done by majority. Historical example: segregation or slavery laws produced people who either obeyed them or came to despise all law.
Bastiat shows that an unjust law works like a kind of moral tax. Every person caught between conscience and law pays with something: either integrity or trust in the state. There is no neutral option. Think of a clerk whose internal rules demand ignoring a clear abuse. If he complies, he numbs his sense of justice. If he refuses, he risks his job and learns that rules can be dodged. This personal cost is rarely discussed when a law is passed. Lawmakers measure budgets, not consciences. But the effect accumulates across society: ordinary people, worn down by crude choices, become either cynical or alienated from the system. The natural next question is: who actually bears this tax, and what does it look like at scale?
Why it matters Relevant in debates about civil disobedience and laws demanding complicity in what is considered immoral.