Quote by RH Tawney

“Society is a hierarchy of rights and duties. Law exists to enforce the second, as much as to protect the first. Property is not a mere aggregate of economic privileges, but a responsible office. Its raison d’etre is not only income, but service. It is to secure its owner such means, and no more than such means, as may enable him to perform those duties, whether labour on the land, or labour in government, which are involved in the particular status which he holds in the system. He who seeks more robs his superiors, or his dependants, or both. He who exploits his property with a single eye to its economic possibilities at once perverts its very essence and destroys his own moral title, for he has ‘every man’s living and does no man’s duty.”

Quote by RH Tawney