well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with.
Property will be protected. Corn will not grow unless it is planted and
manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it unless the chances
are a hundred to one that he will cut and harvest it. Under any forms,
persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert
their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of
earth never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid,
convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound; it will always attract
and resist other matter by the full virtue of one pound weight:--and
the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise,
under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force,--if not
overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, then against it; if not
wholesomely, then poisonously; with right, or by might.

The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons
are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under the dominion of an
idea which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the
religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of
calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom or conquest
can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant
actions, out of all proportion to their means; as the Greeks, the
Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.

In like manner to every particle of property belongs its own attraction.
A cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other
commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. It is so
much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land. The law may
do what it will with the owner of property; its just power will still
attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say that all shall
have power except the owners of property; they shall have no vote.
Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write
every statute that respects property. The non-proprietor will be the
scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do, the whole power of
property will do, either through the law or else in defiance of it. Of
course I speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates.
When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it is the joint
treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns
something, if it is only a cow, or a wheel-barrow, or hi