> His general argument was that endowments should be permitted, in some cases even celebrated, but that they should never be perpetual and that the state must always retain the right to intervene in a philanthropic endowment. His baseline conclusion: “all endowments are national property, which the government may and ought to control.”
Does this include the ACLU? It's been around for nearly 100 years, has a massive membership, a massive budget, and is the recipient of multi-million dollar endowments. The ACLU does important work advocating against government misconduct and abuses. The ACLU _should_ operate in perpetuity. It provides an important out of band check on government power, regardless of the popular democratic sentiments of a given year or decade.
Property rights are the foundation guaranteeing the ACLU's independence. It is the means by which the government encourages a diversity of institutions. By declaring "all endowments are national property" Mills is undermining this basis.
What Mills really had a problem with was the outsized influence of the church in his time. And he works backwards from that state of affairs to come his conclusions.