Yesterday we looked at what David Hume had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part VII
The Founding Fathers thought John Locke was some kind of genius
       Hobbes, Locke, and Hume had all been published before the American Revolution, but most historians agree, from some letters between colonial revolutionaries, and even in some of the wording of the Declaration of Independence, that the Founding Fathers were most influenced by Locke’s Two Treatises on Government. They wanted freedom from English rule, but they had no problem with the British tradition of land owners running their government. If, as in the theory of democracy, government is by the people and for the people, then land must be a commodity that all the people should be able to buy, Individually, that is, not collectively.
       Both as part of profiting from their colonies and to finance their war against France, the British government set up a rigid system for selling land to colonists. After the revolutionary war, the new American government did the same to pay for their revolutionary war and to expand into the western territories. As Malcom J. Rohrbough, writes, in The Land Office Business, the government had already promised land grants to Revolutionary War veterans, and the need to expand and put land in the hands of the citizens made the Americans much less rigid in the structures of the land offices created for that purpose. For instance, “The real estate northwest of the Ohio River remained attractive to speculators, however; and through their influence in congress and the failure of established practices to produce sufficient revenue through small sales, entrepreneurs succeeded in introducing the sale of large tracts” (Rohrbough 1968, 1-11). And William Cronon, in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, writes, “Few other regions in the United States were better suited to the system which the government had used since 1785 for selling public lands, subdividing the nation into a vast grid of square-mile sections whose purpose was to turn land into real estate by the most economically expedient method. By imposing the same abstract and homogeneous grid pattern on all land, no matter how ecologically diverse, government surveyors made it marketable” (Cronon 1968, 102).
       In part II I will discuss the social consequences of this transformation of land into a marketable commodity, but next I want to discuss how the new economic system perpetuates itself through the legal and political institutions.
       The Founding Fathers of the new American nation envisioned a government wherein only property owners had the right to vote. In a letter to James Sullivan dated May 26, 1776, dated May 26, 1776, (before the Declaration of Independence) discussing any new laws that would come with Independence from Great Britain, John Adams tries to justify not allowing women and men without property the right to vote. He uses two, slightly different arguments.
       Adams’ first argument is about women; their “delicacy,” their inexperience in important public matters, and their dependency on men. (That third point is a circular argument, but nobody called him on it at the time: women wouldn’t be dependent on men if they had the vote.) His argument against voting rights for children and men without property rests on the same points as the argument against women; inexperience and dependency. As to men without property, his reasoning is that, having no property of their own, they have no experience with important public matters. Also, he claims that men without property are dependent on men who do own property, and therefore have no will of their own (Adams [1776]). If men without property did vote, Adams thinks, it would corrupt the “one man, one vote” ideal, because then the men who had the most slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers, or any other kind of debtor, would have the most votes by proxy.
       Adams second argument does not directly speak to inequalities of age, gender, or class, but just falls back on Tradition. Men of property have always had the vote, and to make any changes in tradition would open up a floodgate of minorities clamoring for the vote (Adams [1776]).
       In the Federalist paper #10, James Madison explains what is wrong with a direct democracy and pushes for a “republic” that is, a government whose laws are made by elected representatives of the people, rather than by the people themselves. His argument rests on addressing the problem of factions that can split the people‘s consensus. He claims that a republic can prevent a minority faction from forcing its will on the majority, but worries that a majority might take over the government. He writes: “When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed” (Madison [1778]). I am not sure how the spirit and form of popular government is preserved when a wealthy minority can override the wishes of the majority but that is what a republican form of government can do, especially when “the public good” is defined as protecting private property.
       But not all property owners are created equal; small farmers are not as wealthy as the big plantation owners. Men who signed themselves as “Federal Farmer,” wrote “to the Republican” what are also called “the Anti-federalist Papers,” voicing their concerns about the political structure of this republican form of government that the Federalists were proposing for the new Constitution of the United States.
       In Federal Farmer letter no. 3, one astutely predicts that in a Republican government, the elected officials will usually come from the upper classes, without any care for the needs and interests of the lower classes. His solution seems, at first, a logical one. He writes “…we ought to provide for dividing each state into a proper number of districts, and for confining the electors in each district to the choice of some men, who shall have a permanent interest and residence in it” (Federal Farmer [1787]). However, history has shown that even with men elected from their home districts, most elected representatives will still be wealthier than their constituents.
       Thomas Jefferson, like Madison, was a property owner and also assumed that property meant land as well as personal possessions, but unlike the Federalists he did not necessarily side with the rich, saying that he was “not among those who feared the people” (Jefferson [1816]). And when he warned of too heavy taxation because of government debts, he first mentioned the taxing “in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements,” the kind of personal possessions that everyone has regardless of class, and the kind of property justified by Locke. Jefferson only mentioned the tax burden of landowners secondly (Jefferson [1816]).
       Eventually, men without property in the United States were granted the franchise, but by this time the economics of the industrial revolution and the expansion of the western territories had given the most political power to the wealthy landowners.
      Friday: "Thomas Paine Wants A Non-Violent Revolution, Legally”
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

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