p. 276 | Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · September 3, 1891

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 6, No. 35

Madison’s Views of “Property.”

PROPERTY, in its most general sense, is the right to the use or enjoyment of anything. We have a property in our time. All of each individual’s time (that is, as far as government is concerned) belongs to himself; hence, government has no more right to dictate to an individual how he shall use his time than it has to dictate to him how he shall use his money; and it has no more right to deprive him of the free use of his time than it has to deprive him of the free use of his money. Each individual, in actions that concern only himself, is absolute sovereign, governed only by natural laws. The father of our National Constitution in an essay written in 1792, carried this idea of property even further:—

“In its larger and juster meaning, it [property] embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right, and which leaves to everyone else the like advantage. [italics Madison’s] . . . He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by 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. . . .

“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. . . . 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 passions, 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.

“According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just security 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 [that is, human law], the exercise of that [conscience] 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 part.

“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.”