James Madison
“Property,” March 29, 1792,
This term in its particular application means “that dominion which one man
claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of
every other individual.”
In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man
may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the
like advantage. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money
is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free
communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the
profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice
of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have
a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his
rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected.
No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his
possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same,
tho' from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property
of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of
individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the
end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially
secures to every man, whatever is his own.
According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just
securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which,
however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not
protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which
they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable
property.
More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man's
religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed
by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other
property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a
natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay
public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no
title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or
to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is
pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the
property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is
violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of
the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in
his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellation proverbial of
the most compleat despotism. That is not a just government, nor is property
secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies
deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free
choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in
the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property
strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a
manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen
shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth;
where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the
economical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of
buttons of other materials!
A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which
unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species:
where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and
excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and
competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes
are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of
that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by
the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that
could be spared from the supply of his necessities.
If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the
inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly
even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly
violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their
religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly
violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that
acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which
ought to relieve their Fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence will
have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the
United States.
If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise
and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and
the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly
guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter,
will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.
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