Public property

“ The efforts of the propertied interests have been exerted to good purpose. The public mind, the laws and constitutions, the forms of judicial practice—in short, all of the social forces that were of advantage have been bent to the guarantee of property income permanence. ”

“ Of course the government at times must have property which may belong to a private person. The public must at times take property belonging to an individual. Property may be taken, even when the owner will not consent to it, when it is taken for public use. One man's property cannot be taken by the government and given to another person. ”

“ When private property "is affected with public interest" and is used in a manner to make it of public consequence, the public is in fact granted an interest in that use, and the owner of the property in question "must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good, to the extent of the interest he has thus created." ”

“ It is the common property of all until it passes into [45] individual ownership, to be used for agricultural or other purposes, under fixed rules, a specific proportion of the product, or its equivalent, being turned into the common treasury, to prosecute public improvements and for other public purposes. ”

“ If improvements made in the vicinity of the property, the growth of city or town where it is located, the building of railroads, the development of the surrounding country and other like causes, give property an increased value, the owner cannot be deprived of such income by legislative action which prevents him from realizing an income commensurate with the enhanced value of his property. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Other examples of property which ought not to have been created, are properties in public trusts; such as judicial offices under the old French régime, and the heritable jurisdictions which, in countries not wholly emerged from feudality, pass with the land. Our own country affords, as cases in point, that of a commission in the army, and of an advowson, or right of nomination to an ecclesiastical benefice. A property is also sometimes created in a right of taxing the public ”

“ If, then, a certain number of men are the sole dealers in articles of primary necessity, it follows that the public treasury, in passing and repassing through their hands, deposits and accumulates real property there. ”

“ Security of Property.—That private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation therefor, previously paid or secured; that to prevent feudal tenure of land, long leases of agricultural land shall not be made, in most states the longest permitted term being twenty-one years. ”

“ They found the meaning of property in the public purposes to which it contributed, whether they were the production of food, as among the peasantry, or the management of public affairs, as among the gentry, and hesitated neither to maintain those kinds of property which met these obligations nor to repress those uses of it which appeared likely to conflict with them. Property was to be an aid to creative work, not an alternative to it. ”

“ Special differentiated classes of property, such as railroads and other public-service plants, manufacturing interests, mines, and landlords’ and farmers’ holdings are entitled to fair consideration and protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The exercise of property rights shall conform to public welfare. Expropriation, use or restriction of private property for public necessity, and the standards and method of compensation thereof shall be determined by law. ”

“ Whatsoever citizens have bought with money for their private use—not for trade, which is under the supervision of the state—all furniture, clothing, jewelry, etc., etc., is, for the same reason, absolute property. ”

“ You speak of interference with property; but I ask what becomes of the property of the poor man, which consists of his labour? Take those 4,000,000 persons who live in the distressed districts, as described by the right hon. ”

“ The State recognizes and protects private property as a natural means for the execution of individual, family and social functions. All forms of property are subordinate to the supreme interests of the Nation, whose interpreter is the State. ”

“ I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; ”

“ In some countries, the enjoyment of certain political rights depends upon the amount of property. But, in these same countries, property is expressive, rather than attributive, of the qualifications necessary to the exercise of these rights. ”

“ Property is the right to use and abuse. If, then, government is economy,—if its object is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and products,—how is government possible while property exists? And if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings—kings in proportion to their facultés bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? ”

“ Those who are giving their time and energy to the production of wealth, face the fact that property rights have been so construed as to give property owners a first claim on production and to make property income a fixed charge on the industry of the community. ”

“ The preponderance everywhere given to property in land, over wealth in money, trade, or other moveable goods, is a result of the same policy. Indeed it may be said, that the leading principles which govern property in this Kingdom, have their main origin and foundation in the feudal system ”

“ The peasant who hires land, the manufacturer who borrows capital, the tax-payer who pays tolls, duties, patent and license fees, personal and property taxes, &c., and the deputy who votes for them,—all act neither intelligently nor freely. ”

“ Little by little the government will become manufacturer, commission-merchant, and retail dealer. It will be the sole proprietor. Why, at all epochs, have the ministers of State been so reluctant to meddle with the question of wages? Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property, and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society. ”

“ The theories of government which men entertain are emotional reactions to their property interests. "From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of society into different interests and parties." Legislatures reflect these interests. ”

“ If the idea so constantly appealed to in justification of property law is to be realised; if the fruits of each man’s labor [68] are to be guaranteed to him and he is to own the instruments with which he works; if the laws of property are not to establish a parasitic class taking tribute from the labor of others in the forms of Rent and Interest, then we must modify our administration of property. ”

“ Land never was private property in that personal sense of property in which we speak of a thing as our own, with which we may do as we please; and in the administration of estates, as indeed in the administration of all property whatsoever, duty to the State was at all times supposed to override private interest or inclination. ”

“ In civilized communities, property, as well as personal rights, is an essential object of the laws, which encourage industry by securing the enjoyment of its fruits,—that industry from which property results, and that enjoyment which consists, not merely in its immediate use, but in its posthumous destination to objects of choice and of kindred or affection. ”

“ It is true the sheriff does not enter any man’s house to collect a tax from his property. But want knocks at his door and poverty thrusts his face into the window. And what relief can the rich extend? They sit upon their heaps and feel them moulding into ruins under them. The regulations of society forbid what was once property, to be so any longer. For property depends on circulation; on exchange; on ideal value. The power of property is all relative. It depends not merely upon opinion here, but upon opinion in other countries. ”

“ Like man himself, every form of the property of man possesses, besides its special character which makes it the private possession of an individual, a universal side which men gives the community a well-grounded claim to a right to it. That the State and the municipality appropriate a part of the property of every citizen as taxes we all consider a matter of course, or that the law limits the free control of the individual's property. ”

“ That the rich citizen seated in his chamber should find pleasure in contemplating the great convenience and advantage which a large private property brings to its possessor, nothing is more simple, nothing more natural and legitimate than this. ”

“ For if the present large estates were, by the dilapidation of families, to be broken to pieces and sold, others equally great would, in the free circulation of property, speedily accumulate; and the moment any possessor arrived at a certain pitch of fortune, he would probably choose to reside in the better country—near the Parliament, or the Court. ”

“ This determined something, with which the undeterminable property is to be connected, may be of two natures, as will appear immediately. The state has guaranteed to each citizen who has paid his contributions the full use of all his manufactured, built, or bought possessions. ”

“ The institution of property, when limited to its essential elements, consists in the recognition, in each person, of a right to the exclusive disposal of what he or she have produced by their own exertions, or received either by gift or by fair agreement, without force or fraud, from those who produced it. ”

“ To prove the two cases, the one positive, the other negative, is incumbent on those that pretend to support the justice of the original foundation of the exclusive property in land. But how can this be done? What action or service could the original great proprietor of land do the people, by which he could deserve a large proportion of the land of the nation, and a great part of the labour of the people, appending to it? ”

“ Because the government has given it the power to take and to hold property, in a particular form, and for particular purposes, has the government a consequent right substantially to change that form, or to vary the purposes to which the property is to be applied? ”

“ Sir, in the name of the institution of property, of that great institution, for the sake of which, chiefly, all other institutions exist, of that great institution to which we owe all knowledge, all commerce, all industry, all civilisation, all that makes us to differ from the tattooed savages of the Pacific Ocean, I protest against the pernicious practice of ascribing to that which is not property the sanctity which belongs to property alone. ”

“ The Institution of Property, he might urge, is all well enough as a human expedient to secure its reward to industry, and protect the provident labourer against the careless and idle. But for half-million-per-annum fortunes, fifty-mile-long estates, and may-I-not-do-what-I-please-with-my-own proprietors, some other justification, it would seem, must be sought. ”

“ Should there be the slightest irregularity in the method of transfer, men, members of society, imprescriptible possessors of the land, might be deprived at one blow of property, possession, and the means of production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The common reasons for the establishment of private property in land are deduced from the necessity, of offering to individuals sufficient motives for cultivating the ground, and of preventing the wasteful destruction of the immature products of the earth. ”

“ Sometimes this political action primarily affects only the distribution of wealth, and so makes one class rich and another poor. Such is the case with laws which give all the real estate to the oldest son, [Pg 344] laws which allow property to be entailed for a long time or forever, laws which cut men off from the land. ”

“ Wealth ownership and the exercise of authority, concentrated in one person or family, created a basic division in the community between those whose livelihood depended on their labor and those whose income was determined by their ownership of property and their exercise of authority. ”