Two excerpts from Stephen E. Ambrose's
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West:
Before the revolution, George Washington owned tens of thousands of acres in the Tidewater and Piedmont and over sixty~three thousand acres of trans-Appalachia. He wanted more.
Jefferson inherited more than five thousand acres in the Piedmont from his father. He wanted more. From his wife he got another eleven thousand acres. And though he was a substantial land-owner, he was not a great one by Virginia standards...
Jefferson’s interest in exploring the country between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean ran back a full half-century. His father had been a member of the Loyal Land Company, which had been awarded by the crown some eight hundred thousand acres west of the Appalachian Mountains. (p. 68)
This brings to mind some comments by Thomas Paine in
Agrarian Justice:
Land, as before said, is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race. Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.
Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
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