text: And only land owners could vote then. So true, most of the founding fathers were slave owners including Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin. All good men, but not removed from the hypocrisy that has been with us since the beginning. I'll never buy that notion that they were "just men among their neighbors." They knew exactly what they were doing. Franklin, in his old age did a big reversal on his whole legacy as a racist. 
  
  The word infringement is used a lot in the early days. When they delivered the hypocritical logic behind the tenets that became the EC later on, they never came right out and said it was to escape infringement on their way of elite life. And now, not much has changed. It keeps coming back to haunt us.