Property as a source of faction

My colleagues from the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship continue to keep up a lively exchange on email. We’ve been debating lately the impact of religion on the political life of the U.S.

I went back and checked my edition of the Federalist Papers to see what those three eminent political thinkers Hamilton, Madison and Jay had to say about religion in those more Puritan days. I was surprised to find that in its 527 pages, religion appears on exactly six of them.

There was concern about religion’s propensity to create factions, but no more so than concern over individual ambition, opinions on the right style of government or many other sources of faction.

The thing they singled out as the most likely and enduring source of faction was neither religion or political persuasion, but unequal distribution of property.

“Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.” (madison, Federalist Paper no. 10).

Of course, it’s a buyer’s market for many kinds of property right now. If one has the capital.