The bestowing upon men equality of rights, is but giving license to the strong to oppress the weak. It begets the grossest inequalities of condition. - George Fitzhugh

Property is not a natural and divine, but conventional right; it is the mere creature of society and law… if private property generally were so used to injure, instead of promote public good, then society might and ought to destroy the whole institution.

This is no dispute between Northerners and Southerners; but between conservatives and revolutionionists; between Christians and infidels; between law and order men and no-government men; between the friends of private property and socialists and agrarians; between the chaste and the libidinous; between marriage and free-love; between those who believe in the past, in history, in human experience, in the Bible, in human nature, and those who, like Greeley, and Fourier, and Fanny Wright, and Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, and Seward, foolishly, rashly, and profanely, attempt to "expel human nature," to bring about a millennium, and inaugurate a future wholly unlike anything that has preceded it.

The Abolitionists and Socialists, who, alone have explored the recesses of social science, well understand that they can never establish their Utopia until private property is abolished or equalized. The man without property is theoretically, and, too often, practically, without a single right.