The philosophers among the democrats will no doubt insist, that they do not mean to equalise property, they contend only for an equality of rights.

If they restrict the word equality as carefully as they ought, it will not import, that all men have an equal right to all things, but, that to whatever they have a right, it is as much to be protected and provided for, as the right of any persons in... society.

In this sense, nobody will contest their claim. Yet, though the right of a poor man is as much his right, as a rich man's, there is no great novelty or wisdom in the discovery of the principle, nor are the French entitled to any pre-eminence on this account.

The magna charta of England, obtained, I think, in the year 1216, contains the great body of what is called, and our revolutionists of 1776 called it, English liberty.

This they claimed as their birth-right, and with good reason; for it enacts, that justice shall not be sold, nor denied, nor delayed; and, as, soon afterwards, the trial by jury grew into general use, the subjects themselves are employed by the government to apply remedies, when rights are violated.

For true equality and the rights of man, there never was a better or a wiser provision, as, in fact, it executes itself. This is the precious system of true equality, imported by our excellent and ever to be venerated forefathers, which they prized as their birthright.

Yet this glorious distinction of liberty, so ample, so stable, and so temperate, secured by the common law, has been reviled and exhibited to popular abhorrence, as the shameful badge of our yet colonial dependence on England.

Fisher Ames, Essay on Equality No. II (November 1801)