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WHAT IS JUSTICE?

I. THE THEORY OF EQUALITY.

VERY slight acquaintance with the social and economic discussions of the present day is enough to excite surprise at the ease with which people persuade themselves that they know well enough what justice is, however great the difficulty of bringing it about. As of old, in Plato's day, men are engaged in hot debate about "just things"—the justice of this or that particular social arrangement, while they complacently ignore the fundamental question, "What is Justice itself?" No doubt we all have some rough and ready working idea of justice, which might serve well enough for many, if not most, practical purposes. And if the discussions to which I have alluded were limited to immediately practicable measures, we might perhaps be able to get on without any defined theoretical idea of justice in general. But at the present day the immediate reform proposed is often advocated or opposed, not on its own merits, but because it is regarded as a step towards some ideal reconstruction of society which presents itself to one party as the ultimate aim of all political effort, and to the other as fundamentally opposed to that very abstract justice in whose name the reform is demanded. People may agree, for instance, as to the practical justice of an eight-hours day; but the legislative enactment of an eight-hours day commends itself to some who would admit that this particular advantage could be gained by other means, precisely because it is considered a step towards a State-regulated equality of conditions; while to others who would have no objection to the particular measure, the means of obtaining it seems objectionable because it asserts a principle the logical application of which involves the very essence of Injustice, or

(as Aristotle would have put it) equality for the unequal. When the most everyday questions of practical politics are thus debated on the most speculative grounds, it becomes a matter of pressing importance to examine the theoretical basis of the ultimate social ideals to which appeal is made, and particularly of the fundamental conception which, though not the whole, is an essential part of all of them-Justice.

Among the current popular conceptions of Justice the most prominent are perhaps―

1. The ideal of Equality-Every one to count for one, and nobody for more than one.

2. The ideal of just Recompence-To every one according to his work.

I propose in the following pages to examine the meaning of the above propositions, and to ask how much guidance they are capable of affording as ultimate canons of political justice. When we have ascertained the limits within which each of these doctrines can reasonably be propounded (1) as ideally true, (2) as capable of practical application, it may be easier to ask how far there is any fundamental opposition between what present themselves at first sight as antagonistic and inconsistent ideals.

In examining the doctrine of Equality, it is essential to bear in mind the context in which it stands. It was put forward by Bentham (not, of course, for the first time) as a canon for the distribution of happiness; and it is obvious that the Greatest Happiness principle, or the principle of Greatest Good (however Good be interpreted), stands in need of that or some other supplementary canon before it can be available for practical application. It is obvious that in a community of a hundred persons we might produce the greatest possible happiness or good in a variety of ways. It would be quite legitimate, so far as the Greatest Happiness principle is concerned, to give the whole of our disposable good to twenty-five out of the hundred, and ignore the other seventy-five, provided that by so doing we could make each of these twenty-five four times as happy as we should make each of the hundred by an equal distribution;

and if by an unequal distribution we could make twenty-five people five times as happy, or give them five times as much good (whatever the true good be) as we could procure for each of the hundred by an equal distribution, we should be absolutely bound by our Greatest Good principle (taken by itself) to ignore the seventy-five, and distribute our good exclusively among the twenty-five.

one.

So long as the amount of good would be neither increased nor diminished by an equal distribution, it will hardly be denied as an abstract principle that justice requires an equal distribution. It is true that the principle is an exceedingly abstract It merely asserts that if you have a certain quantity of good to dispose of between A and B, you ought to give half to A and half to B, so long as all you know about them is that one is A and the other B, or other things being equal, or so long as there is no reason for preferring A to B. How far the axiom ought to be modified in its practical application by the fact that A never does differ from B solely in being a different individual, and what kind of inequality between A and B supplies reasonable ground for an inequality in the shares assigned to A and B respectively, are questions which must be postponed. But, for the present, I assume that it will be generally admitted as a self-evident truth, that equality is the right rule for distributive justice in the absence of any special reason for inequality. Our first difficulty arises in the case where an equal distribution of good necessarily diminishes the amount of good to be distributed. It will hardly be denied that this is often the case. It is easy to imagine cases where the difficulty arises in connection with an actual distribution of a definite and assignable good to a definite and assignable number of persons. In a beleaguered garrison nobody would question the justice of an equal distribution of rations; but supposing it were known that relief could not arrive for a month, and the provisions available could keep half of them alive, while an equal distribution would insure the slow starvation of the whole, it would surely be better to cast lots as to which half should be fed and which should starve. I do not maintain that the exact conditions

indicated could ever be exactly forthcoming, or even that the course suggested would be actually the right one to take if they were. But if that course would not be right in the case supposed, it must be for some other reason than its injustice. No one would be bold enough to propose that the whole garrison should starve simply to insure an ideal equality between all the individuals concerned. In a less extreme form the difficulty I have indicated is of constant occurrence. The schoolmaster, for instance, has to face the problem how far a whole class is to be kept back that the ultra-stupid minority may learn something. And when we turn from detailed questions of individual conduct to large problems of social and political action, the case supposed is not the exception but the rule. Nobody will deny that the present distribution of good things is excessively and arbitrarily unequal. The most satisfied champion of the existing social order will not deny that many people are badly clothed, badly fed, over-worked, and otherwise miserable, through no fault of their own. And the most extreme advocate of social reconstruction, who is at once sane and well-informed, will hardly deny that any attempt to produce an immediate equality of possessions, or of happiness, or of opportunities (whichever it be), would only cure these inequalities by producing, in no long period, a general dead-level of misery and want, or (to put it at the lowest) by seriously diminishing the ultimate wellbeing of the country or the race. Here, then, an unequal distribution has to be adopted in order that there may be something to distribute. Either we may say (from a rough and practical point of view) that equality is a good, but it is not the good, and that we must in practice balance the principle of Greatest Good against the principle of Equality, or (with more scientific precision) we may assert that in such cases there is no real sacrifice of equality. The law is fulfilled even in the case wherein its practical operation seems to involve the height of inequality, just as the laws of motion are fulfilled when two opposite forces neutralize each other and produce rest. For what the individual is entitled to is simply equality of consideration. The individual has had his rights even when the equal

rights of others demand that in practice he should receive no good at all, but even a considerable allowance of evil. It would be the height of injustice, indeed, that the good of ninety among a hundred people should be considered, and the well-being of the remaining ten wholly ignored. The ninety and the ten are entitled to consideration precisely in the ratio of ninety to ten. The rights of the ten would be grossly violated if the ninety were to do what would be best for themselves were the remaining ten out of the way; as, for instance, by dividing among themselves all the available provisions, and giving none to the excluded ten. On the other hand there are cases where it would not only be expedient, but just, that ten men should die that the remaining ninety might live, e.g. in case of a forlorn hope in war. In such cases the minority gets its rights as fully as the majority, provided its proportionate claim to consideration has been duly satisfied before it was determined that the measure proposed was on the whole for the general good.

The distinction that has just been laid down seems to me of considerable practical importance.

1. In the first place, it is of importance in connection with the Philosophy of Rights. I am at loss to discover any tangible concrete thing, or any "liberty of action in acquisition," to which it can be contended that every individual human being has a right under all circumstances. There are circumstances under which the satisfaction of any and every such right is a physical impossibility. And if every assertion of right is to be conditioned by the clause "if it be possible," we might as well boldly say that every man, woman, and child on the earth's surface has a right to £1000 a year. There is every bit as much reason for such an assertion as for maintaining that every one has a right to the means of subsistence, or to three acres and a cow, or to life, or to liberty, or to the Parliamentary franchise, or to propagate his species, or the like. There are conditions under which none of these rights can be given to one man without prejudice to the equal rights of others. There seems, then, to be no “right of Man" which is unconditional, except the right to consideration-that is to say, a right to have his true well-being (whatever that