Tracing property rights through Locke, Blackstone, and the Founders — and why the protection of property is inseparable from the protection of all other liberties.
John Locke argued that the primary purpose of government was to protect life, liberty, and property. This Lockean framework was deeply influential on the American Founders, who incorporated it into the Declaration of Independence's reference to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
William Blackstone, the preeminent English legal scholar, wrote: 'The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of property: which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land.'
The Fifth Amendment protects property rights in two ways: it prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation, and it prohibits the deprivation of property without due process of law. These protections were considered fundamental by the Founders.
The connection between property rights and other liberties is not accidental. A government that can take your property can effectively control your life. The ability to own and use property freely is the economic foundation of political freedom.
Taxation without representation was one of the central grievances of the American Revolution. The Founders understood that the power to tax was the power to destroy — and that unlimited taxation was incompatible with genuine liberty.
Madison observed in Federalist #10 that the protection of the 'diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate,' was 'the first object of government.' The protection of property rights was not a concession to the wealthy — it was a fundamental principle of just government.
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.