Bastiat is a good essayist, and his main point is well-taken. One should be careful about social policy, it involves real people. However, some of the things he takes issue with seem to be preoccupations you might expect for the well-to-do in the 19th century.
Law is justice. What is justice, though? Bastiat thinks that if a person would do something and it would be considered wrong, then if a government does it, likewise it is wrong [focusing on taking what others have]. This sounds like a sound principle, but falls apart almost immediately upon some inspection. A group may have properties that an individual does not (the famous example being atoms are invisible, but things made of atoms are not necessarily so), and so it seems to me that we can accept governments can do things that we would not individuals to do. It may or may not be true, but the reason cannot come from examples for individuals. For example, we let governments enforce the law and carry-out punishments. I'm sure Bastiat would answer that these sorts of things are only the sorts of things that people would agree to, and so it would not be compulsory, but undoubtedly some would not agree, and so then it is not clear what should be done. Perhaps he's right that without a government people will rationally choose to give up things, but my own experience tends to tell me that poor Nash equilibria (such as for air pollution) do occur if we don't have some sort of strong third-party to enforce some standards (usually the government is one of the few entities that can do this). People's decisions affect each other in various ways, and so we should be careful about how much we limit others' decisions, we have to acknowledge that others' choices make a substantial difference to our lives. It should perhaps be of last resort to let governments do these sorts of things, but Bastiat has few concrete examples to let us ponder actual circumstances.
Also, free public education is mentioned, (as are almost all taxes) as a type of plunder. Free public education has been fairly important for creating economic wealth. It is not obvious how the supposed harm from taking taxes to support this necessarily outweighs the actual harm of depriving some of education. It seems to simply be a fact that left to our own means, society does not provide for those less fortunate as often as would be beneficial. The argument against philanthropy by the government also does not seem very strong. It could lead to problems, but governments around the world do quite well with all sorts of varying levels of philanthropy.
There is a deeper issue, as well. His argument seems to implicitly assume that we know what we own (and so deserve). I don't think it is obvious what we "deserve" and therefore have a right to own. What sort of things become my property? Land? If this land came from some act of plunder previously, is it still my property? In addition, if my abilities come from natural talents rather than hard work, do I truly deserve it? Is it justice? I think the idea of justice needs to be more strongly motivated. It isn't hard to come up with some reasonable but by no means definitive answers to these questions that are favorable to a Bastiat-like viewpoint, but this is not touched. Bastiat talks clearly of the evil of slavery, but in this short essay he doesn't explore what the consequences are. What is the status of a slave owner's (non-human) properties that come through plunder?
I think Bastiat is on stronger ground when he cautions about believing leaders who claim they have everyone's best interests in mind, and that we should not rush into societal experiments without strong amounts of evidence and experience to guide us. While I personally didn't find Bastiat's arguments for such a hands-off government, he does write well, and if you think that you know what property is proper, his arguments are sound enough. It is a short essay, and so it is possible Bastiat answers these questions in other writings.
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