d so
long as it comes to the owners in the direct way, no other opinion would
arise in any equitable community than that property should make the law
for property, and persons the law for persons.

But property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not
create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as really the new owner's, as
labor made it the first owner's: in the other case, of patrimony, the
law makes an ownership which will be valid in each man's view according
to the estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity.

It was not however found easy to embody the readily admitted principle
that property should make law for property, and persons for persons;
since persons and property mixed themselves in every transaction.
At last it seemed settled that the rightful distinction was that the
proprietors should have more elective franchise than non-proprietors,
on the Spartan principle of "calling that which is just, equal; not that
which is equal, just."

That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared in former
times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether too much weight had
not been allowed in the laws to property, and such a structure given to
our usages as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them
poor; but mainly because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure
and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution of property, on
its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons
deteriorating and degrading; that truly the only interest for the
consideration of the State is persons; that property will always follow
persons; that the highest end of government is the culture of men; and
if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement
and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land.

If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is
less when we take note of our natural defences. We are kept by better
guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect.
Society always consists in greatest part of young and foolish persons.
The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen,
die and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper,
as their fathers did at their age. With such an ignorant and deceivable
majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations
beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things
have their laws, as