It is necessary for us for a moment to look at what is the true state of the question now before us. The proposition of my friend from Roxbury [Mr. Dearborn], is to make population the basis for apportioning the senate, and this proposition is to be followed up,—as the gentleman, with the candor and frankness which has always marked his character, has intimated—with another, to apportion the house of representatives in the same manner. The plan is certainly entitled to the praise of consistency and uniformity. It does not assume in one house a principle which it deserts in another. Those who contend on the other hand, for the basis of valuation, propose nothing new, but stand upon the letter and spirit of the present constitution.
Here then there is no attempt to introduce a new principle in favor of wealth into the constitution. There is no attempt to discriminate between the poor and the rich. There is no attempt to raise the pecuniary qualifications of the electors or elected—to give to the rich man two votes and to the poor man but one. The qualifications are to remain as before, and the rich and the poor, and the high and the low are to meet at the polls upon the same level of equality. And yet much has been introduced into the debate about the rights of the rich and the poor, and the oppression of the one by the elevation of the other. This distinction between the rich and poor, I must be permitted to say, is an odious distinction, and not founded in the merits of the case before us. I agree that the poor man is not to be deprived of his rights any more than the rich man, nor have I as yet heard of any proposition to that effect; and if it should come, I should feel myself bound to resist it. The poor man ought to be protected in his rights, not merely of life and liberty, but of his scanty and hard earnings. I do not deny that the poor man may possess as much patriotism as the rich; but it is unjust to suppose that he necessarily possesses more. Patriotism and poverty do not necessarily march hand in hand; nor is wealth that monster which some imaginations have depicted, with a heart of adamant and a sceptre of iron, surrounded with scorpions stinging every one within its reach, and planting its feet of oppression upon the needy and the dependent. Such a representation is not just with reference to our country. There is no class of very rich men in this happy land, whose wealth is fenced in by hereditary titles, by entails, and by permanent elevation to the highest offices. Here there is a gradation of property from the highest to the lowest, and all feel an equal interest in its preservation. If, upon the principle of valuation, the rich man in a district, which pays a high tax, votes for a larger number of senators, the poor man in the same district enjoys the same distinction. There is not then a conflict, but a harmony of interests between them; nor under the present constitution has any discontent or grievance been seriously felt from this source.
When I look around and consider the blessings which property bestows, I cannot persuade myself that gentlemen are serious in their views, that it does not deserve our utmost protection. I do not here speak of your opulent and munificent citizens, whose wealth has spread itself into a thousand channels of charity and public benevolence. I speak not of those who rear temples to the service of the most high God. I speak not of those who build your hospitals, where want, and misery, and sickness, the lame, the halt and the blind, the afflicted in body and in spirit, may find a refuge from their evils, and the voice of solace and consolation, administering food and medicine and kindness. I speak not of those, who build asylums for the insane, for the ruins of noble minds, for the broken hearted and the melancholy, for those whom Providence has afflicted with the greatest of calamities, the loss of reason, and too often the loss of happiness—within whose walls the screams of the maniac may die away in peace, and the sighs of the wretched be soothed into tranquillity. I speak not of these, not because they are not worthy of all praise; but because I would dwell rather on those general blessings, which prosperity diffuses through the whole mass of the community. Who is there that has not a friend or relative in distress, looking up to him for assistance? Who is there that is not called upon to administer to the sick and the suffering, to those who are in the depth of poverty and distress, to those of his own household, or to the stranger beside the gate? The circle of kindness commences with the humblest, and extends wider and wider as we rise to the highest in society, each person administering in his own way to the wants of those around him. It is thus that property becomes the source of comforts of every kind, and dispenses its blessings in every form. In this way it conduces to the public good by promoting private happiness; and every man from the humblest, possessing property, to the highest in the State, contributes his proportion to the general mass of comfort. The man without any property may desire to do the same; but he is necessarily shut out from this most interesting charity. It is in this view that I consider property as the source of all the comforts and advantages we enjoy, and every man, from him who possesses but a single dollar up to him who possesses the greatest fortune, is equally interested in its security and its preservation. Government indeed stands on a combination of interests and circumstances. It must always be a question of the highest moment, how the property-holding part of the community may be sustained against the inroads of poverty and vice. Poverty leads to temptation, and temptation often leads to vice, and vice to military despotism. The rights of man are never heard in a despot’s palace. The very rich man, whose estate consists in personal property, may escape from such evils by flying for refuge to some foreign land. But the hardy yeoman, the owner of a few acres of the soil, and supported by it, cannot leave his home without becoming a wanderer on the face of the earth. In the preservation of property and virtue, he has, therefore, the deepest and most permanent interest.
Gentlemen have argued as if personal rights only were the proper objects of government. But what, I would ask, is life worth, if a man cannot eat in security the bread earned by his own industry? If he is not permitted to transmit to his children the little inheritance which his affection has destined for their use? What enables us to diffuse education among all the classes of society, but property? Are not our public schools, the distinguishing blessing of our land, sustained by its patronage? I will say no more about the rich and the poor. There is no parallel to be run between them, founded on permanent constitutional distinctions. The rich help the poor, and the poor in turn administer to the rich. In our country, the highest man is not above the people; the humblest is not below the people. If the rich may be said to have additional protection, they have not additional power. Nor does wealth here form a permanent distinction of families. Those who are wealthy today pass to the tomb, and their children divide their estates. Property thus is divided quite as fast as it accumulates. No family can, without its own exertions, stand erect for a long time under our statute of descents and distributions, the only true and legitimate agrarian law. It silently and quietly dissolves the mass heaped up by the toil and diligence of a long life of enterprise and industry. Property is continually changing like the waves of the sea. One wave rises and is soon swallowed up in the vast abyss and seen no more. Another rises, and having reached its destined limits, falls gently away, and is succeeded by yet another, which, in its turn, breaks and dies away silently on the shore. The richest man among us may be brought down to the humblest level; and the child with scarcely clothes to cover his nakedness, may rise to the highest office in our government. And the poor man, while he rocks his infant on his knees, may justly indulge the consolation, that if he possess talents and virtue, there is no office beyond the reach of his honorable ambition. It is a mistaken theory, that government is founded for one object only. It is organized for the protection of life, liberty and property, and all the comforts of society—to enable us to indulge in our domestic affections, and quietly to enjoy our homes and our firesides… .
… It has been also suggested, that great property, of itself, gives great influence, and that it is unnecessary that the constitution should secure to it more. I have already stated what I conceive to be the true answer; that a representation in the senate founded on valuation, is not a representation of property in the abstract. It gives no greater power in any district to the rich than to the poor. The poor voters in Suffolk may, if they please, elect six senators into the senate; and so throughout the Commonwealth, the senators of every other district may, in like manner, be chosen by the same class of voters. The basis of valuation was undoubtedly adopted by the framers of our constitution, with reference to a just system of checks and balances, and the principles of rational liberty. Representation and taxation was the doctrine of those days—a doctrine for which our fathers fought and bled, in the battles of the revolution. Upon the basis of valuation, property is not directly represented; but property in the aggregate, combined with personal rights—where the greatest burthen of taxation