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21 Leigh on Power and Property Benjamin Watkins Leigh, representing Chesterfield, was the outstanding spokesman of the conservative party and a thorn in the flesh of reformers throughout the convention. A prominent lawyer at the height ofhis powers, he had first made a name for himself two decades before in enunciating the doctrine of legislative instruction to Virginia’s Senators in Washington and later as compiler of the Revised Code of 1819.“Leigh was eloquent, bold, uncompromising,” Grigsby wrote, “yet there was something in his manner that displayed a childish fretfulness , that ill became a man of his distinguished excellence.” In this he took after his master, John Randolph. He earned the west’s hatred. When he compared the slaves in the east t o the “peasantry of the West,” the entire “peasantry” of Harrisonburg hanged and burned him in effigy. . . . Sir, the resolution reported by the Legislative Committee, in effect, proposes to divorce power from property—to base representation on numbers alone, though numbers do not quadrate with property—though mountains rise between them—to transfer,in the course of a v ery few years,the weight of power over taxation and property to the west, though it be admitted, on all hands, that the far gr eater mass of pr operty is now, and must still be held in the east. Power and property may be separated for a time, by force or f raud—but divorced, never. For, so soon as the pang of separation is felt—if there be truth in history, if there be any certainty in the experience of ages, if all pr etensions to knowledge of the human hear t be not vanity and folly—property will purchase power, or power will take pr operty. From Proceedings, pp. 156–62, 16 4. Leigh on Power and Property 301 And either way, there must be an end of free Government. If property buy power, the very process is corruption. If power ravish property, the sword must be drawn—so essential is property to the very being of civilized society ,and so certain that civilized man will never consent to return to a savage state. Corruption and violence alike terminate in militar y despotism. All the Republics in the w orld have died this death. In the pursuit of a wild impracticable liberty, the people have first become disgusted with all regular Government, then violated the security of property which regular Government alone can defend, and been glad at last to fi nd a master. License, is not liberty, but the bane of liber ty. There is a book—but the author was a tory, an English tor y, and he wrote before the American Revolution, so that I am almost afraid to refer to it—yet I will—there is an Essay of Swift on the dissentions of Athens and Rome , in which the downfall of those Republics, is clearly traced to the same fatal err or of placing pow er over property in different hands from those that held the property. The manner of doing the mischief there, was the vesting of all the powers of judicature in the people; but no matter how the manner may be var ied, the principle is the same.There has been no change in the natural feelings, passions and appetites of men, any more than in their outwar d form, from the days of Solon to those of George Washington. Like political or moral causes put in action, have ever produced, and must forever produce, every where, like effects—in Athens, in Rome, in France, in America. The resolution of the Legislative Committee, proposes to give to those who have comparatively little property, power over those who have a great deal—to give to those who contribute the least, the power of taxation over those who contribute the most, to the public tr easury—and (what seems most strange and incongr uous) to give the power over property to numbers alone, in that branch of the L egislature which should be the especial guardian of property—in the revenue-giving branch. To my mind, Sir, the scheme is irreconcilable with the fundamental pr inciple of representative Government, and militates against its peculiar mode of operation, in producing liberty at first, and then nur turing, fostering, defending and pr eserving it, for a thousand years. My friend from Hanover, (Mr. Morris) has already explained to the Committee , how the institution of the House...

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