Privateer

“ I then went on deck, for I heard the grating of the sides of the two vessels, and knew that they were in contact.
All was uproar and confusion on board of the Transcendant, but there was nobody on board the schooner except Toplift and myself. I cannot say that I never saw such a scene, for I had seen quite as bad on board of a privateer. The common seamen, as well as the soldiers, when let loose to plunder, are like maniacs. ”

“ They were the first to assert and prove that men and women are not the private estate of princes, to be disposed of in their industry, their property, their consciences, by the discretion of those who were fortunate enough to be able to live by the labours of others. ”

“ The employers talk about "private enterprise," as if there were anything private about modern enterprise. Its combines are as big as many commonwealths; and things advertised in large letters on the sky cannot plead the shy privileges of privacy. ”

“ The state expresses the cooperative or mutual-veto will of that part of society which is politically organized for this purpose. Private property expresses the individual will of the several private owners, or of the private chief, whether patriarch, pope, suzerain, boss, or industrial monopolist, who is at the head of the particular institution. The sociological view, being strictly inductive, does not impart to the theory of the state that which is potential and ideal, but only that which is actual and historical. ”

“ Go and live in the country; there follow thine own business, and ply thy private affairs. Hast thou made suit and great means to be entertained in the court, and to wind into special favour with some prince and potentate, and after all thy travail suffered repulse? Well, thou shalt live privately at home, without danger, without trouble. Again, Art thou entered into action, and dost thou manage state affairs, wherein thou hast cares enough, and no time to breathe thyself? ”

“ True private property, is a political being permanently guided by good moral principles, because its interest is to do right; spurious, one as permanently guided by evil, because its interest is to do wrong. ”

“ The impossibility of accumulating private property, both from the regulations of the Society and the circumstances surrounding them, ought to convince the most sceptical of their worldly disinterestedness, nor can the greatest scoffers at their exertions deny to them the possession of a virtue which every class of Englishman esteems above all others, the highest order of personal courage.’ (See Note.) ”

“ We have found this primitive all-pervasive principle to be private property, which originates with man's self-con- sciousness and is the beginning and basis of all social institu- tions. Private property is but another name for that coercive relation existing between human beings through which the pro- prietor comands the services of others. This also is sovereignty, and in mediseval law 1 "the one word dominion has to cover both proprietary rights and many kinds of political power ”

“ Sovereignty and private property, then, constitute the two branches of this all-pervasive social relation, coercion, or dominion.
But private property, contrary to the legal view, is not the creature of the state, nor is it subject to the state. It is pristine and anterior. It springs from the very nature of man. The state is rather the creature and offspring of private property. It arises quite late in the history of property, with the rise of reflective thinking and the capacity for rational cooperation. ”

“ In the third state, toward which society is trending, the concept of service will rule, and private property as a dominant concept will be compelled to take a thoroughly subordinate place in human activities. ”

“ If you serve God, the King, and the commonwealth truly and faithfully—as they be able to defend you against the devil, the world, and private profit, so you may be sure they will suifer no person to do you injury.' [57]
The enthusiasm of private individuals urges them to enterprises to which their natural strength is unequal; they prove at last the sincerity of their own convictions by the sacrifices which they make for their success; if they are mistaken, and their expectations deceive them, they injure only themselves. ”

“ Our own choice is shewn by our continual aspiration to possess property, our common hailing of it as sacred, our setting apart of the word Respectable for those who have attained it, our ascription of pre-eminent religiousness to commandments forbidding its violation, and our identification of law and order among men with its protection. Therefore is it vital to a living knowledge of our society that Private Property should be known in every step of its progress from its source in cupidity to its end in confusion. ”

“ A glance across history or a simple acquaintance with human life in any community will show us that private property is at the same time a necessary expression of personality and stimulator of character, and, on the other hand, a chief outlet and fortification of selfishness. ”

“ For those whom the state has assigned you as companions and assistants in public business, you are answerable only within the limits I have just laid down; but for those whom you have chosen to associate with yourself as members of your private establishment and personal suite, you will be held responsible not only for all they do, but for all they say.... ”

“ The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man's honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the publick, will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he will serve the publick: Publick and private interest will secure each other; all will cheerfully give a part to secure the whole, and be brave to defend it.
These certain laws therefore are the only certain beginnings and causes of honesty and virtue amongst men. ”

“ Why should a lord treasurer, or a bishop, or even the grand signior, or the pope of Rome, to be good and virtuous, and endeavour the conquest of his passions, have occasion for greater revenues, richer furniture, or a more numerous attention, as to personal service, than a private man? ”

“ With reason, then, the common opinion of mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have contended for the opposite view, has found in the careful study of nature, and in the laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with, human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquillity of human existence. ”

“ Priv′ity, secrecy: something kept private: knowledge, shared with another, of something private or confidential: knowledge implying concurrence: relation between different interests, as, for example, in feudal tenure the interests of several persons in the same land, the mutual relationships of contractor and contractee, the relation caused by common knowledge in breaches of contract: (obs.) seclusion, intimacy; Priv′y-cham′ber, private apartment in a royal residence; Priv′y-coun′cil, the private council of a sovereign to advise in the administration of government ”

“ It has always appeared to me so impertinent for individuals to appeal to the public on transactions merely private, that I own the most apparent necessity does not prevent my entering into such a dispute without an awkward consciousness of its impropriety. ”

“ 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? ”

“ How many repeated instances have we seen of men, and even bodies of men, who, by certain obligations, have been obliged to give up public or private property, when a general good could not be otherwise obtained? ”

“ Conquest, you observe also, just of the kind which in our ‘Times’ newspaper is honoured always in like manner, ‘Private Enterprise.’ The only question is, whether the privacy of your enterprise is always as fearless of exposure as it used to be,—or even, the enterprise of it as enterprising. Let me tell you a little of the private enterprise of dead Venice, that you may compare it with that of the living. ”

“ In considering the harm done to civic duty by selfish personal interests we were led to observe that the fewer points of contact between government and the pecuniary interests of private citizens, the better both for the purity of government and for the conscience of the private citizen. ”

“ The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property. ”

“ Although, therefore, the private interest of the rulers or of the ruling class is a very powerful force, constantly in action, and exercising the most important influence upon their conduct, there is also, in what they do, a large portion which that private interest by no means affords a sufficient explanation of; and even the particulars which constitute the goodness or badness of their government, are in some, and no small degree, influenced by those among the circumstances acting upon them, which can not, with any propriety, be included in the term self-interest. ”

“ In private life you would, as a “self-respecting” man, probably leave any one guilty of these things to the society of his boon companions, to the mercy of his creditors and, perhaps, to the attention of the police. ”

“ The circumstances must be very exceptional indeed under which I would counsel any man, holding a fair position in society and endowed with the duties and privileges of a landed proprietor as you we, to defy the opinion of society, and to turn his back on those duties and privileges. ”

“ In the first place, it is established by a series of cases that an ulterior public advantage may justify a comparatively insignificant taking of private property for what, in its immediate purpose, is a private use. ”

“ The accursed system of private property, rooted in the abysmal malice of the human heart, lies like a dead weight upon every creative impulse. Everything is weighed and judged, everything is valued and measured, in relation to this. ”

“ No doubt the institution of private property, necessitating, as it does, the transmission to one person of the possessions and earnings of another, always involves the inheritance of unearned power and opportunity. ”

“ Whether, as in many cases, what he holds as private he so holds by permission only, or whether private ownership is recognized, it remains true that in the last resort he is obliged to surrender whatever is demanded for public use. ”

“ After enduring all the privations and subjecting himself to all the perils incident to his vocation—when he has toiled for months to add by his honest labor to the comfort of his fellow men, and to the aggregate wealth of the nation, he finds himself suddenly in the clutches of the law for trespassing on the public domain. ”

“ It is difficult even to imagine a state of society in which, on the bare suggestion of some miserable domestic spy, any man or woman whatever might be convened before an archdeacon or his surrogate and put upon his or her oath as to all the most private affairs of life ”

“ In private property man has found an incentive for the noblest works and justification for the most devilish acts that history records. It is the producer of paradoxes—the parent of inconsistencies. It is a god—creating good and evil. ”

“ The qualities of mercy and practicality have made equity the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims. ”

“ Let us now take a glance at a snug little commercial bubble, blown into being by 'highly respectable men,' a private affair altogether, which never had a name upon 'Change, and was managed—we cannot say to the satisfaction of all parties—by the originating contrivers, without making any noise in the papers, or exciting public attention in any way. ”

“ All those things which belong to the class of private utilities should be left to private ownership, because I believe in individualism; but all those things which partake of the nature of public utilities should belong to the public. ”

“ Historical jurists have maintained their theory on the basis of two propositions: (1) The conception of private property, like the conception of individual personality, has had slow but steady development from the beginnings of law; (2) individual ownership has grown out of group rights just as individual interests of personality have been disentangled gradually from group interests. ”

“ The difference between private and public ownership, it seems to me, is mainly in the natural selection of those most competent to foresee the future and to direct labor into the most productive channels, and the greater poignancy of the illusion of self-seeking under which the private owner works. ”

“ These monarchs of all they surveyed probably never connected an idea of proprietorship on their part of the scenes over which they roamed, any more than does the fisherman on the banks or shoals of the sea, or one who daily enjoys the view of the changing aspects of the horizon or the sky, associate with it any claim of his own beyond the right of transient use. ”

“ Let us go around the fold, which is an extensive one, and, through its extensions, reach into almost every nook of private life.—Each private domain, indeed, physical or moral, offers temptations for its neighbors to trespass on it, and, to keep this intact, demands the superior intervention of a third party. ”