“Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty.…The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. John Adams, in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787), reminds us: The normal “trio” of essential rights was “Life, Liberty and Property.” We find property mentioned in most “rights” documents from the founding period: “pursuit of happiness” is an outlier. We must also note that Jefferson’s use of “the pursuit of happiness” is unusual.
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