1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)
Context: The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.
“As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
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James Madison 145
4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817) 1751–1836Related quotes
The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)
1910s, Citizenship in a Republic (1910)
Quotes 1990s, 1995–1999, The Common Good (1998)
Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 324
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, The Common Good (1998)
Context: Property rights are not like other rights, contrary to what Madison and a lot of modern political theory says. If I have the right to free speech, it doesn't interfere with your right to free speech. But if I have property, that interferes with your right to have that property, you don't have it, I have it. So the right to property is very different from the right to freedom of speech. This is often put very misleadingly about rights of property; property has no right. But if we just make sense out of this, maybe there is a right to property, one could debate that, but it's very different from other rights.
4 Burr. Part IV., 2379.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)
In 1819, as quoted in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction https://books.google.com/books?id=Tpb7HAIhWHgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=9780199843282&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz1ILxqfLcAhVDnuAKHda9Ai0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=9780199843282&f=false (2012), by Allen C. Guelzo, Chapter One