>>213064995They also hated property-less urbanites.
1776 Only people who own land can vote
Declaration of Independence signed. Right to vote during the Colonial and Revolutionary periods is restricted to property owners
George Washington, Gouverneur
Morris, John Dickinson, and James Madison spoke of their anxieties about the urban working
class that might arise some time in the future---“men without property and principle,” as
Dickinson described them---and even Jefferson shared this prejudice. Madison,
state the problem.
"In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without
landed or any other sort of property. These will either combine, under
the influence of their common situation—in which case the rights of property
and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands—or, what is more
probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition, in which case
there will be equal danger on another side."
"Democracy, will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues, and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." -- John Adams