I first noted a reference to this passage in the book “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic” by Mark R. Levin. Interesting viewpoint from a bygone era when none of today’s REAL issues could have possibly been recognized, known, appreciated, or anticipated those many decades ago…especially from a bunch of Old White Guys. #OWG…OMG.
BTW, Mr. Nedham, is AKA Mr, Marchamont Nedham (Needham). Just sayin…
“Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely [9] a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. 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. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2104#Adams_1431-06_19
Oh, and for those modernists internetsia among the sum lot of you below you will find a blurb taken from the entry on Machiavelli in the holy web bible. Interesting how old white guys like John Adams were so well-read and well-versed on schlubs like that old Italian dude. Since he didn’t have the intellectual linkage that Wikipedia brings forth to the masses in the smallest of bites it was left to Adams, and others like him, to devour the whole course, several actually, in order to finish the meal; think about it all, talk about it all to similarly minded old white guys, and then write more than a few tweets about what was concluded. But such treatment could never pass for the shroud of supreme knowledge available today to the masses but best wielded by the chosen. It is too deeply considered and takes far too long to digest such fare. Small bites by nimbly constricted minds is all that seems able to be swallowed. Pity, that.
“Whatever his intentions, which are still debated today, he has become associated with any proposal where “the end justifies the means“. For example Leo Strauss (1958, p. 297) wrote:
Machiavelli is the only political thinker whose name has come into common use for designating a kind of politics, which exists and will continue to exist independently of his influence, a politics guided exclusively by considerations of expediency, which uses all means, fair or foul, iron or poison, for achieving its ends—its end being the aggrandizement of one’s country or fatherland—but also using the fatherland in the service of the self-aggrandizement of the politician or statesman or one’s party.”
Hmm, sound familiar to anyone out there?