frugality, fortunate
opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever
produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill sounding
names of avarice and oppression; and besides this, there are some men
who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery
or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their
wants or their independence; whilst in others there is an avidity to
obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of
their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required
with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it
criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a
criterion for exclusive rights.

In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a
commercial company, the rights of the members composing that company are
wholly created by the property they invest therein; and no other rights
are represented in the government of that company, than what arise out
of that property; neither has that government cognizance of _any thing
but property_.

But the case is totally different with respect to the institution of
civil government, organized on the system of representation. Such a
government has cognizance of every thing, and of _every man_ as a member
of the national society, whether he has property or not; and, therefore,
the principle requires that _every man_, and _every kind of right_, be
represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but
one, and that not of the most essential kind. The protection of a man's
person is more sacred than the protection of property; and besides
this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or services by which
he acquires a livelihood, or maintaining his family, is of the nature of
property. It is property to him; he has acquired it; and it is as much
the object of his protection as exterior property, possessed without
that faculty, can be the object of protection in another person.

I have always believed that the best security for property, be it much
or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as
can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every motive to
violence; and this can only be done by an equality of rights. When
rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when property
is made a pretence for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right