The Law was originally published in French in 1850 (this translation to English is from 1874) by Frédéric Bastiat. It was written two years after the third French Revolution of 1848 and a few months before his death of tuberculosis at age 49. The essay was influenced by John Locke's Second Treatise on Government and in turn influenced Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. It is the work for which Bastiat is most famous.