Originally published in 1850 "La loi" was written two years after the third French Revolution of 1848 and a few months before Bastiat's death of tuberculosis at age 49. This translation to American English is from 1874.
America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more—and nothing less. The rest—everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything "noble and just," and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history—was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle.