p.

17

Not so with regard to the rights of property. The
man who has half a million of dollars in property, and pays
five hundred or a thousand dollars annually to support the
government and laws which protect the poor man as well
as the rich, has a much higher interest in the government,
than the man who has little or no property, and pays
nothing for the protection of his own person, and the
property of others. Without some provision recognizing
this distinction, and giving to men of property the means
of securing it, and regulating the disposal of it, without
being wholly subject to the power of those who have little
or no property, universal suffrage may become the instru-
ment of injustice to the most enormous extent. What can
be more absurd and more inconsistent with a republican
government, whose principle is the security of equal rights,
than that the owners of property should not have the right
to govern it ; or that those who have no property or the
least share of it, should have the power to control the pro-
perty of others! A constitution based on such a principle,
must sooner or later produce consequences fatal to just
rights. And it is of no use to the poor: for in the protec-
tion of personal rights all men have an equal interest, and
the rich have the same motives to protect the rights of the
poor, as they have to protect their own. But it is other-
wise with regard to the rights of property, which the poor
have not the same motives to protect, as those have who
own it ; and nineteen twentieths of the laws of all commer-
cial states respect property.

The constitution of the executive department of govern-
ment involves questions of the highest concern.

C