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The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition

Document 21: James Madison on Population and Property (1786, 1787/1788)

One of the drafters of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, devoted much thought to the issue of private property ownership. Among his concerns were how an increase in the population of the country would affect the equitable distribution of land and the divisions that would develop as a result of ownership of property or the lack thereof.

A. To Thomas Jefferson, June 19, 1786

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate wherever the Government assumes a freer aspect, & the laws favor a subdivision of property, yet I suspect that the difference will not fully account for the comparative comfort of the mass of people in the United States. Our limited population has probably as large a share in producing this effect as the political advantages which distinguish us. A certain degree of misery seems inseparable from a high degree of populousness. If the lands in Europe which are now dedicated to the amusement of the idle rich, were parcelled out among the idle poor, I readily conceive the happy revolution which would be experienced by a certain proportion of the latter. But still would there not remain a great proportion unrelieved? No problem in political economy has appeared to me more puzzling than that which relates to the most proper distribution of the inhabitants of a country fully peopled. Let the lands be shared among them ever so wisely, & let them be supplied with labourers ever so plentifully; as there must be a great surplus of subsistence, there will also remain a great surplus of inhabitants, a greater by far than will be employed in cloathing both themselves & those who feed them, and in administering to both, every other necessary & even comfort of life. What is to be done with this surplus? Hitherto we have seen them distributed into manufactures of superfluities, idle proprietors of productive lands, domestics, soldiers, merchants, mariners, and a few other less numerous classes. All these classes notwithstanding have been found insufficient to absorb the redundant members of a populous society; and yet a reduction of most of those classes enters into the very reform which appears so necessary & desirable. From a more equal partition of property, must result a greater simplicity of manners, consequently a less consumption of manufactured superfluities, and a less proportion of idle proprietors & domestics.

B. The Federalist, Number 10, 1787/1788

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and view of the respective propri- etors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

. . . [T]he most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

Source: A. Saul K. Padover, ed., The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings (New York: Harper, 1953), pp. 317-18. B. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist, ed. Benjamin Fletcher Wright (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University/Belknap Press, 1966), pp. 130-31.

Citation Types

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MLA 9th
"Document 21: James Madison On Population And Property (1786, 1787/1788)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0027.
APA 7th
Document 21: James Madison on Population and Property (1786, 1787/1788). The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, In P. Neimark & P. R. Mott (Eds.), Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0027.
CMOS 17th
"Document 21: James Madison On Population And Property (1786, 1787/1788)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, Edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott. Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0027.