law in a conservative direction that protected property rights. Equitable distribution of wealth According to journalist Jamelle Bouie, "among the oldest and most potent strains of American thinking" about self-government is the belief that it cannot coexist "with mass immiseration and gross disparities of wealth and status". He quotes John Adams in a 1776 letter, The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society, to make a division of land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates. If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue and interest of the multitude, in all acts of government. Kentucky settlers petitioning the Confederation Congress for statehood in 1784: “It is a well-known truth that the riches and strength of a free country does not consist in property being vested in a few individuals, but the more general it is distributed, the more it promotes industry, population and frugality and even morality.” historians Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath: “The republican conception of liberty was not noninterference but nondomination — freedom from both private and public overlords”. Political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson quote a warning by Greek-Roman historian Plutarch: "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." Some academic researchers allege that the US political system risks drifting towards oligarchy, through the influence of corporations, the wealthy and other special interest groups. A study by political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern University) released in April 2014, concluded that the U.S. government doesn't represent the interests of the majority of its citizens but instead is "ruled by those of the rich and powerful". The researchers, after analyzing nearly 1,800 U.S. policies between 1981 and 2002, stated that government policies tend to favor special interests and lobbying organizations, and that whenever a majority of citizens disagrees with the economic elites, the elites tend to prevail in getting their way. While not characterizing the United States as an "oligarchy" or "plutocracy" outright, Gilens and Page give weight to the idea of a "civil oligarchy" as used