Impropriation

“ Charges of gross incompetence, disregard of the public interest, communist sympathies, and the like usually have filled the air, and hints of bribery, embezzlement, and other criminal conduct are not infrequent. ”

“ We can imagine none but to gather where another had sown, and escape by simulation and subterfuge the consequences which the act of Congress has prescribed for the unlawful appropriation of such property. ”

“ From the legal frauds by which property is transferred and amassed, human nature has derived most of its envy, malice, and hatred. And if the acquisitions of hierarchy. privilege, patronage, sinceure, bribery, charter and paper stock, have been but seldom able to inspire it with a sufficient share of these passions, to assail fraudulent kinds of property; what danger can be apprehended by genuine private property, defended by all the sanctions which defend the spurious, with the addition of justice? ”

“ Every municipal regulation, then, of any State, or any of its peculiar institutions, which makes man property, is a violation of this great law of nature, and is founded in usurpation and tyranny, and is accomplished by force, fraud, or an abuse of power. ”

“ Also, if the corporation which has the appropriation is dissolved, the parsonage becomes disappropriate at common law; because the perpetuity of person is gone, which is necessary to support the appropriation. ”

“ Thus the custom and advantages to which the enterprise and skill of the first appropriator had given him a just right are abstracted for another's use, and this is done by deceiving the public, by inducing the public to purchase the goods and manufactures of one person supposing them to be those of another. ”

“ Such appropriation, when there is not enough left for all, is at the first aspect, an usurpation on the rights of other people. And though it is manifestly just that he who sows should be allowed to reap, this justice, which is the true moral foundation of property in land, avails little in favour of proprietors who reap but do not sow, and who assume the right of ejecting those who do. ”

“ How easy for him to enter a shop with his polygonal front foremost, and to order goods to any extent from a confiding Tradesman! Let the advocates of a falsely called Philanthropy plead as they may for the abrogation of the Irregular Penal Laws, I for my part have never known an Irregular who was not also what Nature evidently intended him to be—a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power—a perpetrator of all manner of mischief. ”

“ If they must soothe a patron's ear,
Not I—I was not born to bear;
All base conditions I refuse,
Nor will I so debase the muse.
Though I ne'er flatter nor defame,
Yet would I fain bring guilt to shame;
And I corruption would expose,
Though all corrupted were my foes.
I no man's property invade,—
Corruption 's an unlawful trade;
So bribery also. Politicians
Should be tied down to such conditions ”

“ In the recognition which the Landholder professes to make ‘of what occurred to my advantage,’ he equally deals in the arts of misrepresentation, as while he was ‘only the record of the bad,’ and I am equally obliged from a regard to truth to disclaim his pretended approbation as his avowed censure. ”

“ But if the people turn a deaf ear to the specious arguments used to dazzle them and realise that new life needs new conditions, and if they undertake the task themselves, then expropriation can be effected without any great difficulty. ”

“ The genius, the nature, and the spirit of our state governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. The legislature may enjoin, permit, forbid, and punish; they may declare new crimes, and establish rules of conduct for all its citizens in future cases; they may command what is right and prohibit what is wrong, but they cannot change innocence into guilt, or punish innocence as a crime, or violate the rights of an antecedent lawful private contract, or the right of private property. ”

“ Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own; and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole unfeeling process of legal regulation. ”

“ Is it ever scrupled, in extraordinary Cases, to violate all Regard to the private Property of Individuals, and sacrifice to public Interest a Distinction, which had been establish'd for the Sake of that Interest? ”

“ The first appropriator who subjects the property to use, or takes the necessary steps for that purpose, is regarded, except as against the government, as the source of title in all controversies relating to the property. ”

“ In the ideas of a semi-barbarous people, the man who attempts to take the property or life of any one, is deemed to have committed merely a private offence, reparation for which ought to be demanded, not by the public, but by the injured party or his family. ”

“ It is turning discipline into profit, penalty into perquisite, public justice into private revenue. It is rank corruption, master friar.”
“Why are laws made?” said the friar. “For the profit of somebody. Of whom? Of him who makes them first, and of others as it may happen. Was not I legislator in the last article, and shall I not thrive by my own law?”
“Well then, sweet Mawd,” said the baron, “I must leave you, Mawd: your life is very well for the young and the hearty, but it squares not with my age or my humour. I must house, Mawd. ”

“ No client, corporate or individual, however powerful, nor any cause, civil or political, however important, is entitled to receive, nor should any lawyer render, any service or advice involving disloyalty to the law whose ministers we are, or disrespect of the judicial office, which we are bound to uphold, or corruption of any person or persons exercising a public office or private trust, or deception or betrayal of the public. ”

“ What is the law of expropriation on the ground of public utility, which everybody favors, and which is even thought too lenient? [1] A flagrant violation of the right of property. Society indemnifies, it is said, the dispossessed proprietor ”

“ The contention that there has been no constitutional appropriation, or that any attempted appropriation is bad, because the particular uses to which the appropriated money are to be put have not been specified, is without merit. ”

“ It is enough that, unless set aside or their use restrained, they may impose burdens upon the complaining party, or create claims upon his property by which its possession and enjoyment may be destroyed or impaired. ”

“ It is one of many such laws, entirely abolishing the profession of middleman, or costermonger of perishable articles of food, in the city of the Lily.
“Entirely abolishing!—nonsense!” thinks your modern commercial worship. “Who was to prevent private contract?”
Nobody, my good sir;—there is, as you very justly feel, no power in law whatever to prevent private contract. No quantity of laws, penalties, or constitutions, can be of the slightest use to a public inherently licentious and deceitful. There is no legislation for liars and traitors. ”

“ Every person who corruptly solicits or receives, or agrees to receive, for himself, or for any other person, any gift, loan, fee, reward, or advantage, as an inducement to any member, officer, or servant of a public body, doing or forbearing to do anything in respect of any matter or transaction in which such public body is concerned; and every person who shall, with the like object, corruptly give, promise, or offer any gift, loan, fee, reward, or advantage to any person, whether for the benefit of that person or of another, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour. ”

“ The same mouth will solemnly assert, that the principles of equity annul every contract, which defrauds an individual; and that justice or policy requires a catalogue of law charters which defraud a nation, to exist and have their effect. ”

“ By the rules of this they were taught that they ought not to be unjust; not to take away their neighbour’s goods, either by robbery or theft; not to oppress the poor, neither to use extortion toward any; not to cheat or overreach either the poor or rich, in whatsoever commerce they had with them; to defraud no man of his right; and, if it were possible, to owe no man anything. ”

“ Why a fish would laugh at a thing so ridiculous. The government in their necessity take from the people, and those who can’t afford to pay they send to prison—an individual in his necessity takes from another, and the very government who set the example of appropriation punish the appropriator as an offender. Then governments plunder each other, or rather the people of each other; but when any of the people attempt to [152] rob their governments, they judge, hang, draw and quarter the poor wretches without the slightest mercy. Honesty, forsooth! ”

“ Defamatory words falsely spoken of a person, which impute to the party unfitness to perform the duties of an office or employment of profit, or the want of integrity in the discharge of the duties of such an office or employment. ”

“ If the power exist in the State governments, the power of judging of the reasonableness of its exercise in a given case, and of the degree of necessity generally which justifies the appropriation of private property to public use, must exist there also. ”

“ There are many ways of taking property other than by occupation of appropriation, which are within the constitutional inhibition. If its beneficial use and enjoyment are prevented under the sanction of law, it is taken from him as effectually as though the title were condemned. ”

“ The influence of any class imbued with corruptive methods is detrimental to the best interests of a community, and there is no use in denying that those who have been instrumental in causing so much rank perjury in connection with the acquisition of titles, are responsible for a condition that has left its mark upon the people of the public land States in a manner comparable to the trail of a serpent.
There is a compensating side to these land frauds, after all. ”

“ As I have already remarked sir, it was one among the reasons assigned by the honorable member for his wish to be rid of the public lands altogether, that the public disposition of them and the revenues derived from them tends to corrupt the people. this, sir, I confess, passes my comprehension. These hands are sold at public auction, or taken up at fixed prices, to form farms and freeholds. Whom does this corrupt? According to the system of sales, a fixed proportion is every where reserved, as a fund for education. Does education corrupt? Is the schoolmaster a corrupter of youth? ”

“ Given a social state in which public dues are open, regular, and fixed in amount, and in which bribery is distinctly reprobated, as contrasted with a social state in which present giving is common and tolerated or defended by public opinion, the higher moral standard of the former would seem beyond question. ”

“ In any event the number of those who have knowledge amounting to legal evidence is likely to be much larger in the case of the protection of vice than in the case, for example, of a corrupt franchise grant. ”

“ The actions of individuals, groups, or firms, both in the public and private sectors, to influence the formation of laws, regulations, decrees, and other government policies to their own advantage as a result of the illicit and non-transparent provision of private benefits to public officials. ”

“ And where the public interest is involved preferment of that interest over the property interest of the individual, to the extent even of its destruction, is one of the distinguishing characteristics of every exercise of the police power which affects property. ”

“ Impropriety is a violation of certain social customs, and although I should be the last to question the observance of those customs, we must grant, I think, that they rest on foundations quite other than those of right and wrong. ”

“ Now, let this doctrine be applied; for I hold it to be no unwarrantable invasion of private character to apply these principles to public men. When public men openly and notoriously practise vice, they make the vice public, and bring it within public jurisdiction. ”

“ The essence of the doctrine of prior appropriation is beneficial use, not a stale or barren claim. Only diligence and good faith will keep the privilege alive. Seaweard v. Pacific Livestock Co., 49 Or. ”

“ When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it—without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud—to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated ”

“ Our governments are not allowed to invade that appropriation of property called private, by bestowing emoluments which some portion of it must pay, upon any occasion, except such as is covered by that appropriation called publick. ”

“ The effect of the proprietor lies chiefly in his power of private blackmail (especially, in parliamentary countries, of blackmail exercised against politicians) and in his power (when he acts in combination with his few fellows) to suppress a truth of public interest. ”

“ To attempt this task by a surprise upon our people, by arresting them in the midst of their lawful business and applying a new standard of value to their property without any reduction of their debts, or giving them an opportunity to compound with their creditors, or to distribute their losses, would be an act of folly without an example in evil in modern times.”—Congressional Globe, 1869, p. ”