The Struggle for Law
I discover any danger to the feeling of legal right of the people—but the love of gain grown immoral. The historical source and ethical justification of property is labor—the labor not of the hand or arm alone, but of the mind and of talent; and I acknowledge the right, not only of the workman himself to the product of his labor, but of his heir also; that is, I discover in the right of inheritance a necessary consequence of the principle of labor; for I maintain that the laborer should not be prevented denying himself the enjoyment of his property and leaving it to another, whether during his lifetime or after his death. Only through a lasting connection with labor can property maintain itself fresh and healthy. Only at this source is it seen, clearly and transparently, to the very bottom, to be what it is to man. The further the stream is removed from this, its source, and winds into the devious direction of easy and toilless gain, the more turbid do its waters become, until, in the slime of speculation on ’Change and of fraudulent stock-jobbing, it
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