There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property.
William BlackstoneAnd these great natural rights may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property; because as there is no other known method of compulsion, or of abridging man's natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense.
William BlackstoneSo great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community.
William BlackstoneThe most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. for when this reason ceased, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it.
William Blackstone