15

Equality

CHAPTER 15|Document 63

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson

After all; as long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families. As long as Marriage exists, Knowledge, Property and Influence will accumulate in Families. Your and our equal Partition of intestate Estates, instead of preventing will in time augment the Evil, if it is one.

The French Revolutionists saw this, and were so far consistent. When they burned Pedigrees and genealogical Trees, they anni[hi]lated, as far as they could, Marriages, knowing that Marriage, among a thousand other things was an infallible Source of Aristocracy. I repeat it, so sure as the Idea and the existence of Property is admitted and established in Society, Accumulations of it will be made, the Snow ball will grow as it rolls.

The Founders' Constitution
Volume 1, Chapter 15, Document 63
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s63.html
The University of Chicago Press

The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Edited by Lester J. Cappon. 2 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1959.