Adams is correct, but incomplete. The right to private property is a "natural right," as George Mason pointed out in his draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. That means every human being has the right -- by nature (i.e., God-given) -- to own things. The rights of private property, on the other hand, must be limited as to their exercise, i.e., you cannot use what you own to harm yourself, others, or society, and society may even regulate ownership of certain things, but only to the extent that there is a general consensus that such things should not be privately owned and handed over to the State for expedience. Thus, most people agree that, while we have the right to keep and bear arms, this does not include atomic weapons. An important caveat, evidently forgotten by the judges in the New London case, is that, while the State has the responsibility to define the exercise of property, it may never do so in a way that negates the underlying natural right to be an owner. To take property with compensation for overriding public use is one thing, and often necessary, but to take it for a public PURPOSE -- all purposes being "public" as man is by nature a political animal -- utterly destroys property as a natural right, or even a right at all.