SECTION 12.

PROTECTING DUTIES AND BOUNTIES.

The points presenting themselves in considering this impor tant subject, are, first, whether either the federal or state governments possess a right to distribute wealth and poverty, gain and loss between occupations and individuals. Secondly, whether the federal government possesses this right. And thirdly, supposing both or either to possess such a right, whether it is wise, or honest, or beneficial to the United States, to exercise it.

To understand the rights of mankind, the powers of government, and the meaning of constitutions, we ought to ascertain the design of civil society. Man, by nature, had two rights; to his conscience, and to his labour; and it was the design of civil society, to secure these rights. In the case of religious freedom, we have seen one right; in that of the freedom of property, our vision is not so clear; yet both, as natural rights, stand on the same foundation.

By suppressing the distinction between occupations, and covering all by the inclusive term, labour, we at once discern the natural equality of the right. The occupations of men are the men themselves; and every free government supposes, that it is only distinguishable from a tyrannical one by equal laws, and equal rights in its citizens. Our societies grew up from this principle, and we find nothing in our constitutions by which it is abolished. Our governments received man, animated by the creator, with a free will over his mind and his labour; and were instituted to protect the divine bounty. The freedom of conscience was made complete, because no contributions from that natural right were necessary for the support of civil government; but the freedom of labour was incomplete, from the necessity of such contributions. For ages, governments used the division of mankind into religious sects, as a means for

making some men subservient to the avarice of others. We have detected this fraud; but its principle is vindicated by our governments having used the division of mankind into different occupations, as a means for making some men subservient to the avarice of others. The natural rights of labour, in subjecting themselves to contributions for the support of civil government, never meant to acknowledge themselves to be the slaves of a despotick power. These contributions were agreed to, for the purchase of protection, and not to establish a power for transferring the fruits of labour from one man to another. When paid, the freedom of property, as a natural right, occupies in relation to the remainder, the same ground which is occupied by the freedom of conscience. There is no reason to make any deduction from the latter right, for the sake of civil government; the reason for doing so, as to the former, extends only to publick contributions, and when these are paid, the rights of property are the same as the rights of conscience. Had it been proposed in forming our constitutions, to invest government with a power (over and above the power of exacting contributions for publick use) of taking away the property of some and giving it others, it would have been rejected with indignation; yet this power is as much exercised by bestowing gratuities or exclusive privileges, as if the individuals, impoverished and enriched, had been named. This evasion of the freedom of property is particularly fraudulent, when a new society is constituted of men previously divided into distinct sects or occupations. Then the names of these sects or occupations are exactly the same as the names bestowed on infancy, as a medium for transferring property from one to another, and more difficult to exchange, in order to elude the imposition. Suppose, that at the period when the Highlands of Scotland were inhabited by a very few cognominal families, these families had united in a civil government by the names of tribes, either in the terms of the state or federal constitutions. In the first case, an assumption of power by their government to tax one family or tribe to enrich another, would have been exactly equivalent to state exclusive privileges in favour of some occupations, and injurious to others. In the second, an assumption of the same power would also have had this effect, and would moreover have resembled partialities on the part of congress for and against par

ticular states. The endowment of one class of men by the names of their occupations, at the expense of another, is evidently the same in substance, as to tax the McGregors to enrich the McDonalds. All these cases, however modified, are an actual subjection of labour and free will for self good, to the use of avarice; and if this be not tyranny, I know not what is so.

Had beasts established a government among themselves, to protect each individual in the exertion of his own skill and industry, in gathering the fruits of the forest, and this government should have passed laws to prevent the majority of beasts from eating clover and cherries, and confining them to broom straw and blackberries, that a few might indulge in the most delicious fruits; would it not have been an arbitrary restriction of the desires and comforts bestowed on beasts by divine bounty, and a tyrannical abridgment of their natural power and liberty to provide for themselves? The case is much stronger, when the fruits are produced, not spontaneously, but by labour. Can it be less humiliating to reason than to instinct, to suffer this deprivation; or is the latter most capable of feeling it? Yet sophistry, or at least self-interest, has deluded several states into an opinion, that it is a blessing. But Doctor Rezio of Barata. ria could never persuade honest Sancho, that he would be made healthier or happier, by having good victuals or drink conjured away by the wand of power. Nations, excluded by prohibitory duties upon industry and free will, from enjoying the good things produced by different climates and different degrees in the arts, are placed in the situation of the beguiled and half starved Sancho. This is not surprising, when they are obliged to submit to doctors; but what shall we say to nations who boast of doctoring themselves? Are our comforts so numerous that they ought to be diminished? Yes, says the doctor, it will make you richer. When we reflect, however, upon the existence of an ocean for the diffusion of these comforts, and that man has been taught to walk all over the world upon the water, it ought to induce us to doubt, whether this worldly wisdom, even if it were not a fraud, of bartering comforts for deprivations, was preferable to the wisdom which has provided the means of bartering comforts for comforts.

The capacities of reasoning and labouring beget among men a relation founded in desires and wants, which designates them

as constituted by nature, for society. Whether society be tacit or conventional, its end and design is to protect each individual of which it is composed, in the enjoyment and exercise of his primitive and natural faculties of labour and free will. Restraints upon these, so far and no farther, than to protect the same natural rights of other individuals, constitute social liberty; and restraints imposed, not for the end of this social protection, constitute tyranny. If the society has crept tacitly into existence, these two natural rights are the strongest of all limitations upon the powers of its government, because they are imposed by God; if it be conventional, the same limitations also remain, unless the compact should expressly surrender them. It would even be a doubt, if an existing generation should improvidently do so, whether future generations would be bound by the surrender; and the soundest opinion is, that they would not. Suppose the compact should say, that the government should have the power of taking away the life of one man for the private benefit of another; would this be a free government? But if it be silent upon the point, could the government exercise the power because it was not prohibited? And what prohibits it, but the natural paramount human right to the enjoyment of life? It is this paramount right, which has made it unnecessary to stipulate in our constitutions against the killing of one man for the benefit of another. The right of each man to his own labour, by which only his life can be preserved, is as much a natural right, as a right to life itself; nor was there any more need to stipulate in actual social compacts for its safety, than for the safety of life. It is an evasion of the right to live, to take away the products of labour by which men live, and to give them to other men. If a government can take some, it may take all; and bad governments, by this spe cies of tyranny, do often starve men to death. But there is no difference in the principle, whether men are partially starved, or quite starved, to enrich other men. If the reader will recollect, and apply to this point what has been before said in relation to a bill of rights, he will discern that there was no reason to vindicate natural rights in that mode, because they remain, if not surrendered; and as the rights to our lives and our labour are not surrendered by our state constitutions, their design being on the contrary, to protect and preserve both, it follows, that these

paramount rights are limitations upon the power of state governments to invade, either by exclusive privileges or otherwise, to enrich private individuals.

I might rest the argument here, and leave it to the reader to determine whether the interest, liberty or happiness of any state in the union can be possibly advanced by overturning these principles; but as the freedom of property is the object intended to be vindicated by this treatise, I hope he will have patience with me in bringing it into view in as many shapes as I may happen to recollect.

All, or most intellectual improvements, are referable to the free exercise of each man's will, in procuring his own happiness. It unfolds his understanding, increases his knowledge, and animates his virtue. By multiplying the relations between the individuals of the human family, the blessings of society are also multiplied; and an abridgment of these relations is a retrogade movement towards that savage state, in which they are few. These relations are called commerce; and all obstacles thrown in its way are diminutions of an intercourse, from which men have derived their accomplishments, and a capacity for happiness.

Though a power of interfering in the intercourse between individuals by bestowing exclusive privileges on particular sects or interests, civil or religious, is contrary to the rights of nature and the end of society, and has produced oppression, when exercised in all other modes; it is contended, that one mode remains, by which a bad principle may be changed into a good one, and fraud white-washed into justice. By baptizing this bad principle with the goodly name of "an encouragement of manufactures," avarice is supposed to be turned into patriotism, as Jefferies was made an upright judge, by clothing him in ermine; or, as it was once endeavoured to be purified by the still better name religion." It behooves us, therefore, to consider this new nominal modification of the same old tyrannical principle, with great attention.

If men were classed by the colour of their hair, yet the generick term "man" would include them all. Classed by their occupations, all are also included by the generick term "labour." They all have the same rights, whatever may be the outlines of their physical or moral qualities, and to stretch or