Property Rights Are Human Rights

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter, — but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham,
in a speech delivered in 1763
in opposition to an excise tax on perry and cider

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.

John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of
Government of the United States of America," 1787