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Daniel Webster (1820): "The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless." 1/
Webster (1820) cont'd: "In such a case, the popular power would be likely to break limit and control the exercise of popular power. Universal suffrage, for example, could not long exist in a community where there was great inequality of property." 2/
Webster (1820) cont'd: "The holders of estates would be obliged, in such case, in some way to restrain the right of suffrage, or else such right of suffrage would, before, long, divide the property." 3/
Webster (1820) cont'd: "In the nature of things, those who have not property, and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property..." 4/
"It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the support of the government." 5/
Longer excerpts from Webster's speech can be found here: dartmouth.edu/~dwebster/spee…
This speech is 200 years old, so take it for what it's worth. It celebrates the racist logic of Native American dispossession, and offers an overly simplistic and half-hearted swipe at the evils of the slave trade.
Though some of those excerpts I included might make him sound like a bit like another New England Senator named Bernie Sanders, it would be deeply anachronistic to call Webster a socialist of any sort.
Webster believed deeply in the importance of private property. But that didn't stop him from thinking that it was the role of legislators to use governmental power to ensure that it did not become consolidated in ever fewer hands.
The economy in 2020 is incalculably different than it was in 1820. There's no knowing what Webster would say today, nor should we really care all that much.
But anyone who tells you that it's un-American to think the government has a role to play in fostering a more equitable distribution of property to provide a firm sociological grounding for a democratic polity...well, they've got a bone to pick with Daniel Webster.
