The Charlotte Journal

Ownership of Property.—It is well for the rich and poor to be often reminded of the extreme changeableness of condition in this country. Judge Story remarked, with justice as well as force, in his speech before the Massachusetts Convention! "In our country the highest man is not above the law, the humblest man is not below the law. If the rich may be said to have any peculiar protection, they have not additional power. Nor does wealth here form any permanent distinction of families. Those who are wealthy today pass to the tomb, their children divide their estates. Property thus is divided as fast as it accumulates. No family can, without its own faults, stand erect a long time under our statutes of descents and distributions—the only true and legitimate agrarian law. It silently and quietly dissolves the mass heaped up by the toil and diligence of a long life of enterprise and industry. Property is continually changing, like the waves of the sea. One wave rises, and is soon swallowed up in the vast abyss, and seen no more. Another rises, and having reached its destined limits, falls gently away, and is succeeded by yet another; which in its turn, breaks and dies away silently on the shore. The richest man amongst us may tomorrow sink down to the humblest level; and the child with scarcely clothes to cover his nakedness may rise to the highest office in government. And the poor man, while he fondles his infant on his knee, may justly feel the consolation—that if he possess industry and virtue, there is no office beyond the reach of his honorable ambition."