Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury - Property Quotes

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The distribution of property and the distribution of political power are inseparably connected. If power is not made to go with property, property will, in the long run, infallibly follow power.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
[Property furnishes] almost the only motive power of agitation. A violent political movement (setting aside those where religious controversy is at work) is generally only an indication that a class of those who have little see their way to getting more by means of a political convulsion.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Where property is in question I am guilty…of erecting individual liberty as an idol, and of resenting all attempts to destroy or fetter it; but when you pass from liberty to life, in no well-governed State, in no State governed according to the principles of common humanity, are the claims of mere liberty allowed to endanger the lives of the citizens.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
To give 'the suffrage' to a poor man is to give him as large a part in determining that legislation which is mainly concerned with property as the banker whose name is known on every Exchange in Europe, as the merchant whose ships are in every sea, as the landowner who owns the soil of a whole manufacturing town... two day-labourers shall outvote Baron Rothschild... The bestowal upon any class of a voting power disproportionate to their stake in the country, must infallibly give that class a power pro tanto of using taxation as an instrument of plunder, and expenditure and legislation as a fountain of gain.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury