They have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful.
Edmund Burke: “They have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke asserts that people have a right to the products of their labor and to the resources necessary for productive work.
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This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
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