Thus it appears that in no one of the ways in which alone can originate the obligations which must always precede or accompany artificially-created rights, has that particular obligation arisen without which it is impossible for society to obtain artificially the right of preventing individuals from doing as they will with their own. No sufficient pledge has been given by one side, no sufficient benefit conferred by the other. Individuals never agreed to place their all at the disposal of society; society never rendered to individuals any services entitling it to claim such boundless gratitude. One service which it invariably undertakes is that of protecting person and property. This is its chief and primary duty, the fulfilment of which is always the first object of its institution, often the only one it acknowledges. But clearly it cannot by performance of a duty acquire the right of doing the exact reverse of that duty. It cannot by protecting acquire the right of molesting. It cannot by preventing person and property from being meddled with, acquire in its corporate capacity the right of itself meddling. Since then this right of meddling, this right of disposing of what is exclusively some individual's own, otherwise than the owner wishes, has not been acquired by society artificially, it must, if it do actually belong to society, have been come by naturally; and this accordingly is what Utilitarians really, though perhaps unconsciously, assume, treating moreover this gratuitous assumption of theirs as a self-evident truth.

For, as Utilitarians themselves cannot fail on reflection to perceive, they offer no shadow of argument in support of that 'greatest happiness principle' on which their whole system rests. Commencing with the undeniable postulate that happiness is the sole object of existence, and perceiving that individual happiness alone would be a very misleading object, they proceed to take quietly for granted that the only happiness at which life ought to aim is social happiness. Now, undoubtedly social happiness is of more importance than individual happiness—the happiness of many than that of one or a few; neither can there be any worthier object of pursuit than the greatest happiness of the greatest number. All this is seen without being said, but what is by no means so easily seen is how it can be incumbent on any one to pursue that object to his own detriment—how it can be imperative on one or on a few to sacrifice his or their happiness in order to promote that of the many. Plainly such self-devotion cannot be for their personal advantage, and Utilitarianism does not even attempt to show how it can have become their duty. Meritorious, magnanimous, heroic in the highest degree it would certainly be, but does not that very circumstance prove conclusively that it cannot be due, inasmuch as there is nothing meritorious in merely doing one's duty and paying one's debts? But of that which is not due, how can payment be rightfully insisted upon? What the few are under no obligation to yield, how can the many be entitled to extort, or how can the worthiness of the latter's object excuse their doing that which they have no right to do? Is any object, however worthy, to be pursued regardless of all collateral considerations? To these objections Utilitarians have no answer to make. All they can do is tacitly to take for granted the disputed duty and right. That the less ought to give way to the greater, and the few to the many, and that the many may rightfully therefore, if need be, use force to compel the less or the few to give way—these are treated by them as incontestable propositions, even as 'doctrines a priori, claiming assent by their own light, evident by simple intuition.' And although thus from their own inner consciousness evolving the very first principles of their own philosophy, the premises of their deduction that social happiness is the proper aim in life, and that conduciveness to such happiness is the test of morality—'Intuitionists,' strange to say, is the distinctive appellation which they propose to affix to all those who hesitate to accept as ethical foundation stones the results of their intuitional evolution.

Scarcely by a taunt so readily rebuttable will anti-Utilitarians be excited to speedier apprehension of the nature of the lien which corporate self-interest is presumed to have upon individual self-devotion. Not the less tenaciously may they cling to their belief in the right of every one to do as he will with whatever has come by fair means into his exclusive and complete possession. Neither, I venture to think, need less store be set by that right in consequence of an objection very adroitly taken to it by Mr. Mill, which, on account both of its inherent ingenuity and of its having been addressed more immediately to myself, it would be inexcusable in me to leave unexamined. In Mr. Mill's opinion, the right in question, even if valid, would be valueless, because it would be neutralised by precisely similar rights belonging to society. If, he argues, individuals are at liberty to do as they will with their own, so likewise must society be. But 'existing social arrangements and law itself exist in virtue not only of the forbearance, but of the active support of the labouring classes' who in every community constitute a numerical majority. This working-class majority might then if they pleased withdraw their support from existing arrangements, thereby depriving person and property of social protection; and by merely threatening such withdrawal they could compel individuals to acquiesce in their most extravagant demands. 'They might bind the rich to take the whole burden of taxation upon themselves. They might bind them to give employment, at liberal wages, to a number of labourers in a direct ratio to the amount of their incomes. They might enforce on them a total abolition of inheritance and bequest.' Mr. Mill maintains that these things, although exceedingly foolish, might according to my principles, with perfect equity be done; nay, if I understand him correctly, that according neither to mine nor to any one else's principles can any adequate reason be assigned why they should not be done, except that their practical results would be baneful instead of beneficial. And taking this view, he is fully warranted in asking what it can matter that according to my theory 'an employer does no wrong in making the use he does of his capital, if the same theory would justify the employed in compelling him by law to make a different use—if the labourers would in no way infringe the definition of justice by taking the matter into their own hands and establishing by law any modification of the rights of property which in their opinion would increase the remuneration of their labour.'[8]

My reply to this and to the whole argument is the following. So long as society continues to exist, society cannot divest itself of the primary function for the discharge of which it was originally constituted. Society, having come together in the first instance, tacitly pledged to extend protection to each individual associate, cannot, without breach of contract, withdraw that protection. It may, indeed, make any impartial laws it pleases, and attach any penalty it pleases to violation of any impartial law, but it cannot in equity, whatever it may in practice, place any of its members outside the law; neither, most certainly, even if its competence did extend thus far, could it go the farther length of conferring on any one the right of doing wrong to an outlaw. It may even be doubted whether, if an outlaw were to injure any one still belonging to the society, any but the injured person himself would be warranted in retaliating. The sole reason that I can perceive why even he would is, that his rights had been infringed, and that reparation was due to him for any damage sustained by him in consequence, while, on the other hand, the aggressor had forfeited those rights of his which might otherwise have forbidden the injured person from taking the reparation due. But society had had none of its rights infringed. By society no injury had been sustained. To society, therefore, no reparation was due; and society, it seems to me, would have no right to insist on exacting reparation not due to itself from one whom it had forcibly extruded from its communion, and who, therefore, was no longer amenable to its jurisdiction. Society might, indeed, dissolve itself, proclaiming that 'every man for himself, and God for all,' should thenceforward be the rule. But although it might thus leave individual rights without other defence than that of the owner, it could not annihilate individual rights. It might cancel the right to mutual protection, but it could not, in place of that, create a right of mutual molestation. One's own person and property would still be as much one's own as before, and whoever outraged either would not be the less a wrong doer because society permitted his wrong doing to remain unpunished. In all ethical investigations it is impossible to guard too watchfully against the smallest approach to confusion of might with right.

Instead of being valueless, the particular rights of which Mr. Mill speaks so disparagingly, appear to me to possess a value which can scarcely be exaggerated. They are, as may be readily perceived, identical with the two which I have termed 'natural,' and of which I began by saying that they are exceedingly elementary, but of which I have now to add that they are also all-comprehensive, for that there are no genuine rights whatever, however numerous or complex, which neither are included within, nor branch out from, them. This will be manifest on comparison of them with the items enumerated in any other catalogue of rights; as, for instance, with the one drawn up by Mr. Mill, according to whom all rights may be classified as follows:—(1) Legal rights; (2) moral rights; (3) the right of every one to that which he deserves; (4) the right to fulfilment of engagements; (5) right to impartiality of treatment; (6) right to equality of treatment.[9] Each of these varieties will repay a brief examination.

Under the head of 'legal' rights are commonly placed, not those only which are conferred, but those also which are confirmed, by law. Such as law has merely confirmed, however, are of course not the creatures of law. But it is admitted on all hands that a law may be unjust—that is to say, it may without consent from the parties concerned, infringe some previously existing right—and as the right so violated cannot have been created by law, inasmuch as what law had been competent to create, law would be equally competent to cancel—it is clear that there must be rights other than those created by law, rights whose origin was independent of, and anterior to, law. It is apparently to rights of this description that Mr. Mill applies the name of 'moral' rights. Examples of them are a man's rights to personal liberty and to property in whatever belongs to him as having become his by honest means, to both of which, unless he had forfeited them by misconduct, he would be equally entitled, whether his title to them were or were not recognised by law. The only genuine rights which law can create, or consequently can have to confer, are privileges in respect of person or property other than one's own. But such legalised privileges are not necessarily rights. Whether they are so actually or not depends mainly on the character of the legislative authority. A right to interfere with rights not based upon law cannot be conferred without the consent of the parties in whom the independent rights are vested, given either directly by themselves or indirectly through their representatives. If a legislative body be truly and thoroughly representative of the community which it controls, then every one of its enactments, however bad or foolish, is virtually an engagement to which every member of the community is a party, and any privilege arising out of it becomes to all intents and purposes a right. If, on the other hand, the legislative authority be autocratic, or if it represent only certain favoured sections of the community, then none of its enactments, however wise and good, of which a majority of the public disapprove, and which interfere with the rights termed by Mr. Mill 'moral,' are morally binding, except on the legislators themselves and their immediate constituents. Any one else may quite blamelessly break the law, and resist any privilege thereby created, though he must, of course, be prepared, in case of detection, to take the legal consequences of his disobedience. For example, protective duties, however impolitic, if imposed because a majority of the nation were of opinion that a certain branch of domestic industry had better be fostered by protection, could not be evaded without injustice to those engaged in the protected industry, though there would be no injustice in smuggling, if they had been imposed in opposition to the general sense of the public by a packed Parliament or an absolute monarch. The same legal monopoly, which in the one case could not be justly evaded, could not in the other be justly enforced. A legal privilege, in short, becomes a right only when a majority of those at whose expense it is to be exercised, have formally consented either directly or indirectly to its being exercised; and it then becomes a right solely because an engagement has been entered into, in virtue of which, whatever is requisite for its satisfaction has become due. Thus it appears that, whatever legal rights are genuine, and are not at the same time 'moral' rights also, resolve themselves into specimens of the right to fulfilment of engagements, and belong not more to the first than to the fourth of Mr. Mill's categories, to which latter, therefore, we may at once transfer our attention.

Why is it, then, that every one has a right to fulfilment of engagements, to have faith kept with him, to have promises observed? Solely, as it seems to me, because whatever has been promised to any one becomes eventually his due, and because whatever is due or owing ought to be paid. A promise is nothing less than a prospective transfer of property in some thing, or in the advantage derivable from some action, and when the time appointed for making the transfer arrives, whatever has been promised, whether actually transferred or not, becomes the complete property of, and in the fullest sense of the word belongs to him to whom it has been promised; so that the right to fulfilment of engagements resolves itself into the moral right of every one to have that which belongs to him, and we have already seen that every legal right which cannot on other grounds be shown to be a moral right resolves itself into a right to fulfilment of an engagement. Whence it follows that there are no legal rights whatever which are not likewise moral rights, and which might not therefore be equally rights, even though they had never been legalised. Whence, and from what has just been observed with respect to the right to fulfilment of engagements, it further follows that of the five branches of Mr. Mill's classification, the first and fourth may without inconvenience be dispensed with, and that the second will suffice to do duty for itself and for the other two.

We have next to consider a person's right to that which he deserves, with reference to which, and to my assertion that there is no necessary correspondence between the remuneration which a labourer ought to receive and either his merits or his needs, Mr. Mill inquires as follows:—'If justice be an affair of intuition, if we are guided to it by the immediate and spontaneous perceptions of the moral sense, what doctrines of justice are there on which the human race would more instantaneously and with one accord put the stamp of its recognition than these—that it is just that each should have what he deserves, and that, in the dispensation of good things, those whose wants are the most urgent should have the preference?' But surely however just it be that each should have what he deserves, it is so only on condition that he have it from those from whom it is due, and do not take it from those from whom it is not due. The latter, surely, at least as much deserve to be allowed to keep what they have already by honest means got, as others to get what they have not yet got. But if so, then that these should be deprived of their deserts, in order that those may get theirs, is surely about the very last doctrine that ought to be put forward as self-evident and intuitive. 'But,' Mr. Mill proceeds to ask, 'if there be in the natural constitution of things something patently unjust, something contrary to sentiments of justice, which sentiments, being intuitive, are supposed to have been implanted in us by the same Creator who made the order of things that they protest against—do not these sentiments impose upon us the duty of striving by all human means to repair the injustice? And if, on the contrary, we avail ourselves of it for our own personal advantage, do we not make ourselves participators in injustice, allies and auxiliaries of the Evil Principle?'[10] Now, as I have already said, I am myself no intuitionist, but if I were, I should not the less feel warranted in here replying that by no theory of justice, intuitive or other, can the passive spectator of an injustice to which he is no party be bound to assist in repairing the injustice, simply because he has the means. A creditor denied payment of his fair debts does not get what he deserves; but upon whom, except the defaulting debtor, does it therefore become incumbent to repair the latter's injustice by paying his debts? And if there be in the general order of mundane affairs, as—provided I may attribute the existence of it, as of all other evil, not to God, but to the devil—I don't mind admitting there may be—something which prevents many of our fellow-creatures from getting their desserts, something contrary, therefore, to our sentiments of justice whether those sentiments have been implanted in us by the Creator or not, I still maintain that those sentiments do not impose upon us the duty of striving to correct the injustice. They necessarily stimulate us more or less powerfully, according to their own intrinsic strength, to undertake that noblest of all tasks, but they do not render it imperative upon us. Whether, if we actively avail ourselves of the injustice for our own profit—though this, by the way, is no more than every one of us does who takes advantage of competition among labourers to obtain labour for a less price than he perceives it to be worth—we are not making ourselves auxiliaries of the Evil Principle, may be matter of opinion; but, at all events, we do not even then become participators in an injustice which we did not create, and do not uphold or help to perpetuate, but merely accommodate ourselves to. At worst, we are but accessories to it after the fact. In simply accepting the situation and striving to make the best of it for ourselves, without trying to make it better and only abstaining from making it worse for others, our conduct may be contemptible, mean, base, disgusting, or what you will, only not iniquitous; for whatever, short of their deserts, may, from the cause supposed, be received by our fellow-creatures, although in one sense plainly due to them, is as plainly not due from us, and we cannot, without palpable injustice, as well as palpable abuse of words, be charged with injustice for merely declining to pay debts that we do not owe.

The rights to impartial and to equal treatment need not detain us long. There is no right to impartiality except where impartiality is due, and it is only in a small minority of cases that impartiality is due. There is nothing iniquitous in showing favour to the extent of giving one person more than his due, provided no other person be prevented from having as much as his due. The lord of the vineyard who gave unto all his labourers alike, the same to those who had wrought for him but one hour as to those with whom he had agreed that for a penny they should bear the burden and heat of the day, did the latter no wrong; his eye was not the less good because theirs was evil. A judge, or an arbitrator, or the conductor of a competitive examination, is bound to make his award without respect of persons, because he cannot favour one without withholding from some other what that other ought to have. On every distributor of Government patronage, likewise, it is morally incumbent to select for the public for whom he is trustee, the best servants he can find. An English Prime Minister has no right to make his son a Lord of the Treasury or of the Admiralty, if he know of any one better fitted for the post and willing to accept it; and if he name any but the fittest candidate, he fails in his duty to the community on whose behalf he acts. But a private employer, acting for himself alone, is under no similar obligation, and may take whom he pleases into his service, and assign to him whatever position therein he pleases, without affording any cause for reasonable complaint to those more capable members of his establishment whom he places under one less capable. In short, except in those rare cases in which impartiality means rendering what is due, in which cases it is but another name for justice, there is nothing unjust in disregarding it.

As for equality, although its 'idea,' as Mr. Mill says, 'often enters as a component part both into the conception and into the practice of justice, and in the eyes of many persons constitutes its essence,'[11] I can think of no single case in which, unless by reason of some special agreement, it can possibly be due, or in which, consequently, there can be any right to it. Even that equal protection for whatever is indisputably one's own, the claim of all to which is commonly admitted almost as a matter of course, is really due from those only by whom the obligation to afford it has been tacitly or formally accepted. On this ground it is due from the public at large, and from those individuals to whom the public has delegated certain of its tutelary functions, but from no other individuals whatever. No one else is bound to take, for the protection of all other people, whatever pains or trouble he takes for his own security—to watch, for instance, as vigilantly that his neighbour's house as that his own is not broken into. And while the one solitary claim of any plausibility to universal equality of treatment requires to be largely qualified before it can be conceded, there is no other claim of the kind which does not carry with it its own refutation; there is no other which does not partake of the absurdity patent in the communistic notion that all the members of a society are entitled to share equally in the aggregate produce of the society's labour. How is it possible that an equal share can be everybody's due, if different persons may have different deserts, and everyone's deserts be likewise his due?

We have now gone completely through the list of artificially created rights, without finding one that does not derive all its validity from connection with some pre-existing right. We have seen that among so-called rights none whatever are genuine by reason merely of any extrinsic sanction they may have received, but that all real rights either are such intrinsically, or are based upon, or embody within them, some right purely intrinsic. We have seen that there are two rights endued with this intrinsic character—viz., that of absolute control over one's own self or person, and that of similar control over whatever else has by honest means come into one's exclusive possession, or become due or owing to him exclusively; and, because these rights, wherever the conditions necessary for their exercise occur, of necessity exist, springing up at once and full grown, in the necessary absence of any antagonistic rights that could prevent their existing, I have not scrupled to call them 'natural;' nor do I think that further apology can be needed for such application of the epithet. To maintain, moreover, that these natural rights constitute the essence of all artificial rights, was simply equivalent to saying that no so-called right can be genuine unless requiring for its satisfaction no more than already actually belongs or is due to its claimant; while every right which does require no more must be genuine, because there can nowhere exist the right to withdraw or to withhold from any one anything that is exclusively his. These seeming truisms are indeed diametrically opposed to a theory which enters on its list of friends names no less illustrious than those of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Bentham, and Mill. Still, whoever, undeterred by so formidable an array of adverse authorities, is prepared to accept the description of rights of which they form part, will have no difficulty in framing a theory of justice perfectly conformable thereunto.

The justice of an action consists in its being one, abstinence from which is due to nobody. The justice of inaction—for just or unjust behaviour may be either active or passive—consists in there being nobody to whom action, the reverse of the inaction, is due. 'Justice, like many other moral attributes, may be best defined by its opposite,' and all examples of injustice have this one point in common, that they withhold or withdraw from some person something belonging or due to him, or in some other way infringe his rights, and consequently wrong him. Conversely, a point common to and characteristic of all just acts and omissions, is that they neither prevent anybody from having that which is due to him, nor in any other way infringe any one's rights, and that they consequently do no one any wrong. It is not essential to the justice of conduct that anything due be thereby rendered. It suffices that nothing due be withheld. All conduct is just by which nobody is wronged.

It is further to be noted that all just conduct is of one of three kinds—that which justice peremptorily exacts; that which she merely permits, and may even be said barely to tolerate; and that which she approves of and applauds, without, however, presuming to enjoin it. Conduct of this last sort is just in that it leaves nothing undone which justice requires, but it is also more than just in that it does more than justice requires. To speak of it as simply just, is therefore somewhat disparaging. It is just in the sense in which the less is comprehended by the greater. He who faithfully fulfils an engagement that has provided for his making a reasonable return for whatever advantage he might obtain under it, shows himself simply just in the matter, and nothing either more or less. He who, having driven a hard bargain, insists rigorously upon it, giving nothing less, and taking nothing more than had been mutually stipulated, is likewise strictly just, but is also shabby, and deserves to be told so plainly. He who, besides making full return, according to contract, for value received, does something more, at some inconvenience to himself, out of regard for another's need, is not a whit more just than either of the other two, but he is generous into the bargain, and deserves thanks in proportion.

Rising out of these considerations are two others equally meriting attention.

In the first place, we may see additional cause for distrusting the testimony which etymology has been supposed to record in favour of 'an origin of justice connected with the ordinances of law.'[12] That 'justum is a form of jussum, that which has been ordered:' that '[Greek: dikaion] comes directly from [Greek: dike], a suit of law:' that 'recht, from which came right and righteous, is synonymous with law,' is obvious enough; and it may not be out of place to add that in French the word droit has, with almost savage irony, been selected as the technical name, not of law simply, but of legal procedure with all its crookedness.[13] Still it seems more in the ordinary course of things to explain this linguistic identification of law with justice, by supposing conformity to justice to have been the primitive element in the formation of the notion of law, than by supposing 'conformity to law to have been the primitive element in the formation of the notion of justice.' It seems more probable that certain things were commanded because they were deemed just, than that they were deemed just because they were commanded. Even the ancient Hebrews, who 'believed their laws to be a direct emanation from the Supreme Being,' although, if asked why it was wrong to kill or steal, they might very likely have replied, 'Because theft and murder have been forbidden by God,' would still have acknowledged that it would be wrong to kill or steal, even if there had been no divine prohibition of the practices. And when we recollect that among 'other nations, and in particular the Greeks and Romans, who, knowing that their laws had been made by men, were not afraid to admit that men might make bad laws, ... the sentiment of justice came to be attached, not to all violations of law, but only to violations of such laws as ought to exist,' what had previously appeared probable is converted into certainty. Principles of justice to which law ought to conform cannot but have been anterior to law, and cannot have originated in law. And certainty on this point grows still more certain, assurance becomes doubly sure, when we reflect that, as was pointed out above, many things are just which, not only does not law command, but which justice barely tolerates, permitting them, indeed, to be done, but permitting them also to be reprobated.

Secondly, we may perceive that in mere justice there can be nothing praiseworthy. Justice is nothing more than abstinence from injustice, and no commendation can be due for not doing that the doing of which would deserve censure. Justice, if entitled to be ranked among the virtues at all, is at best only a negative virtue, as being the reverse of a vice. It is distinguished from all other moral qualities, as being the single and solitary one, compliance with whose behests is a duty which we owe to others. Of meekness, patience, temperance, fortitude, courtesy, whatever display it may for any reason be our duty to make, precisely that display justice requires us to make. Whatever of any one of these qualities justice does not exact from us, we may, without wronging any one, omit. We must not, indeed, incapacitate ourselves by tippling for our proper work, nor offend the eyes or ears of decenter folk by reeling obstreperously through the streets; but, if we take the precaution of retiring during an interval of leisure to our privy chamber, our making beasts of ourselves then and there to our heart's content, is our own concern, and nobody else's. No doubt, in doing this we should be doing very wrong, but still there is no contradiction in saying that we should have perfect right to do it, inasmuch as we should thereby be wronging no one but ourselves. Of another class of virtues—of all those which admit of being directly contrasted with justice, and which may for shortness' sake be without much inaccuracy comprehended under the general designation of generosity—it may, with literal truth, be said that the practice of them is no part of our duty to our neighbour. Provided we are careful to let every one have what, between him and us, are his bare dues, we may be selfish, mean, sordid to excess, without infringing any one else's rights, without the smallest dereliction of our duty to others. True, ethical writers are in the habit of speaking of 'duties of perfect and imperfect obligation,' but of these 'ill-chosen expressions,' as Mr. Mill,[14] with abundant reason, styles them, the latter, more particularly, is of a slovenliness which ought to have prevented its being used by any 'philosophic jurists.' What some of these mean by it is stated to be 'duties in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to our choice; as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeed bound to practise, but not towards any defined person, or at any prescribed time.' But, according to this explanation, there are duties of which performance may not only be indefinitely postponed, even until a morrow that may never come, but of which performance at one time will warrant non-performance of them subsequently; so that, for instance, he who has behaved charitably on past occasions, may be uncharitable afterwards. 'In the more precise language' of other writers, we are told that while 'duties of perfect obligation are those duties in virtue of which a correlative right resides in some person or persons, duties of imperfect obligation are those which do not give birth to any right.' But, as where there is no right nothing can be due, it would seem from this that by duties of imperfect obligation are to be understood duties performance of which is not due. I hope to be pardoned for declining to accept these illusive distinctions as the boundaries which separate justice from the other components of morality. I neither understand how any obligation can be otherwise than perfect, nor do I recognise any duties whatever except those of justice. The main distinction between justice and all positive virtues I take to be that, whereas compliance with its behests is always imperative, compliance with theirs never is, but is always optional and discretionary. Of whatsoever is, for whatsoever reason, due, it is invariably justice, and justice alone, that demands payment or performance. Justice claims, and claims peremptorily, whatever is owing, but never puts forward the smallest pretension to anything that is not owing. But since whatever is owing plainly ought to be paid, and since justice never claims anything but what is owing, it is clear that there cannot be any merit in satisfying the claims of justice. Merit is possible only in actions which justice does not enjoin, but to which some other virtue exhorts.

From the main difference here pointed out, a minor collateral difference ramifies. Of whatever ought to be paid or done, payment or performance may be righteously enforced. Here I have the satisfaction of proceeding for a few steps side by side with Mr. Mill, although only, I am sorry to say, to part company again immediately. 'It is a part,' he says, 'of the notion of duty in every one of its forms that a person may rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be exacted from a person as one exacts a debt. Unless we think it may be exacted from him, we do not call it his duty.'[15] Now, since justice never asks for anything but what is due, never makes a requisition compliance with which is not a duty, it follows that all those persons to whom its requisitions are addressed may be rightfully compelled to comply with them, whereas, since what every other virtue requires is always something not due, compliance with its requisitions is never a duty, and cannot, except unrighteously, be enforced. This—viz., the rightfulness of using compulsion in aid of justice, as contrasted with the wrongfulness of resorting to it in aid of generosity, rather than the rightfulness of punishing breaches of the one and not of the other, seems to me the 'real turning-point of the distinction' between the two. For gross disregard of generosity, and indeed of any other virtue, may rightfully be punished, justice fully sanctioning the punishment although indicating also the nature of the penalty to be inflicted in each case, and restricting it within certain limits. Whoever plays the dog in the manger in a manger of his own, or makes an exclusively selfish use of his wealth or other advantages, refusing to do good to his neighbour at however little sacrifice on his own part it might be done, is not thereby infringing anybody else's rights, or thereby wronging any one else. He is only exercising his own undoubted rights. Still he is exercising them in a manner deserving of severe reprobation, and which witnesses of his conduct may justly punish by testifying to him the scorn, disgust, or indignation he has excited. It is no more than just that he should have his deserts and receive the punishment which has become his due. But justice, although permitting him to be punished for acting ungenerously, does not sanction his being compelled to make a show of acting generously. If his conduct had been unjust instead of simply ungenerous, no punishment would be adequate that did not force him to repair the evil he had done, or to do the good he had left undone. But the most flagrant breach of generosity, neither keeping nor taking away anything to which any one has a right, does nothing for which reparation can be due. It consists simply in a man's making an exclusively selfish use of what is exclusively his, and to make such use is one of the rights of property. Whoever exercises that odious right is justly punished by being shown how hateful we think him, but we must not, on pretence of justice, commit the injustice of depriving him of a right which is confessedly his.

It is not, then, by being rightfully liable to punishment that unjust differs from ungenerous conduct. The latter also ofttimes deserves and incurs punishment. But since there can be no merit in doing that the not doing of which would merit punishment, it may seem that, as in justice so likewise in generosity there cannot be anything positively meritorious. Neither in truth would there be if conduct were entitled to be styled generous simply as being the reverse of ungenerous. Generosity would then, like justice, be a virtue in no higher sense than that of not being a vice—a negative virtue if a virtue at all. But an action does not really deserve to be called generous unless what justice requires be exceeded by it in a degree more than sufficient to prevent the agent from deserving the imputation of meanness, nor even then unless the excess have been done from a purer motive than that of the hope of praise or other reward. An action is generous only in the proportion in which it involves self-sacrifice, voluntarily undergone for the benefit of others, without any view on the agent's part to further compensation than that derivable from the consciousness of making other people happy. In such voluntary and disinterested self-sacrifice consists the merit which is one chief characteristic of generosity as of most positive virtue, distinguishing it from justice, in which there is never a surrender of anything which one would be warranted in keeping, but merely a rendering of what belongs or is due to others. All conduct, not immoral, admits, as already more than once intimated, of a tripartite division, into that which may be rightfully enforced; that of which, though it be not due nor rightfully enforcible, neglect deserves to be and may justly be punished by reproaches; that which is neither due nor reasonably to be looked for, but which involves a voluntary surrender for the good of others of some good which one might without reproach keep for oneself. Of this last description is the only conduct in which there is any proper or positive virtue.

So much and such complex argumentation may not impossibly be deemed a good deal in excess of what is requisite to establish the conclusion to which it points, and which may be summed up in the following very simple propositions:—That, by a person's rights being understood the privilege of having or doing whatever no other person has a right to prevent his having or doing, justice consists of abstinence from conduct that would interfere with that privilege; that justice, therefore, is not dependent on extrinsic sanction, but arises spontaneously from the nature of things, and may almost indeed be said to spring necessarily from the meaning of words; and that its sole merit is exemption from the demerit that would attach to the withholding or withdrawing from any person anything belonging or due to that person. With all possible confidence, however, in the innate vigour of these propositions, I cannot suppose that they do not require all possible adventitious strengthening to be qualified to displace the doctrine to which they are opposed. I proceed, therefore, to test somewhat further the adequacy of the description of justice which they involve by confronting it with certain intricate problems, in presence of which the rival utilitarian definition will be found to be hopelessly at fault.

There are few subjects on which casuists have differed more widely than those of the legitimacy, and the proper measure of punishment. One thinks it unjust that anybody should be punished for the sake of example to others, or for any purpose except his own amelioration. A second replies that it is only for the sake of other people's good that an offender ought to be punished; for that, as for his own good, he himself should be left to decide what that is, and he is pretty sure not to decide that it is punishment. A third pronounces all punishment unjust, seeing that a man does not make himself criminal, but is made so by circumstances beyond his control—by his birth, parentage, education, and the temptations he meets with. Then, for the apportionment of punishment, some persons think there is no principle like that of the lex talionis—an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Others that the penalty should be accurately proportioned to the immorality of the offence, by whatever standard that immorality be measured. Others, again, that punishment should be limited to the minimum necessary to deter from crime, quite irrespectively of the heinousness of the particular crime punished. Of the first three of these opinions, Mr. Mill observes that 'they are all extremely plausible, and that so long as the question is argued as one of justice simply, without going down to the principles that lie under justice, and are the source of its authority, he is unable to see how any one of the reasoners can be refuted. For every one of them builds upon rules of justice confessedly true—each is triumphant so long as he is not obliged to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than those he has selected, but that as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have as much to say for himself as the others. No one can carry out his own notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding.'[16] This view of the matter, however, can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory. If utilitarian notions of justice cannot be carried out without trampling each other down, they plainly should not be suffered to go at large, but should be relegated forthwith to the limbo of oblivion. But right cannot really be opposed to right; justice cannot really be inconsistent with itself: it never can be unjust to do what is just. Anti-utilitarian justice tolerates no such intestine disorder. The sole ground on which she sanctions punishment is the indispensableness of punishment for the reparation of injury. Whoever has suffered wrong has been subjected to invasion of some right, personal or proprietary, and is entitled to amends for the outrage; while the aggressor from whom the amends are due, ought to render them because he owes them, and because he ought, may, if necessary, be compelled, to render them. By the breach of right which he has committed, he has forfeited his own corresponding right, which may now be equitably set aside to whatever extent may be requisite for reparation of the evil he has done, one essential part of such reparation being adequate security against repetition of the wrong. So far as may be necessary for this purpose, punishment may equitably go, but no further. Genuine justice does not permit penal laws of human enactment to take into account the abstract turpitude of crime. That she reserves for divine cognisance, recollecting that 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' saith the Lord. Nor does she permit the smallest aggravation of punishment for the sake either of the offender's own mental improvement, or to discourage others from evil doing; neither, on the other hand, does she recognise any claim to abatement on the plea of an offender not having been able to help acting as he did. She would not, indeed, punish with death or with stripes an outrage committed by a lunatic or an idiot, partly because an outrage may be really less offensive for being committed unwittingly, inasmuch as it does not, at any rate, add insult to injury, and also because the corporal chastisement of a lunatic or an idiot could afford no reparation to the wounded feelings of a healthy mind. But so far as even an idiot or a lunatic was capable of making good the evil he had done by rendering what had in consequence become due, Anti-utilitarianism would require him equally with an erring saint or sage to make it, and equally, too, would subject him to whatever restraint might be deemed not more than sufficient to prevent his doing the same evil again. And of course she does not treat an offender of ordinary intelligence with indulgence which she would not show even to a lunatic, but exacts inexorably full reparation for what he has done, requiring him commonly to pay in kind so far as he can, and to make up with his person for any deficiency. Within the limits thus marked out she is well content that, with the one object which alone justifies punishment, other secondary objects with which justice has no concern, should be combined. She is well content that the same penal measures as are called for in order to compensate the injured party, should also subserve the reform of the criminal, and serve as general deterrents from crime. But she protests against the notion that these, or any other objects, can ever excuse the infringement of any ordinance of justice, or of any of even a criminal's rights which the criminal has not forfeited by crime. Justice, in short, in her penal, as in all her other arrangements, has but to adhere closely to the anti-utilitarian principles of rendering what is due, and of taking nothing that is not due, in order to steer clear of all the difficulties by which the ablest and most accomplished Utilitarians confess themselves staggered.

A second greatly vexed question is, 'whether, in a co-operative industrial association, it is just or not that talent or skill should give a title to superior remuneration? On the one side it is argued that all who do the best they can deserve equally well; ... that superior abilities have already advantages more than enough in the admiration they excite, the personal influence they command, and the internal satisfaction attending them; and that society is bound in justice rather to make compensation to the less favoured for this unmerited inequality of advantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary side, that society, receiving more from the more efficient labourer, owes him a larger return; that a larger share of the joint result being actually his work, not to allow his claim to it is a sort of robbery; that if he is only to receive as much as others he can only be required to produce as much.'[17] 'Between these appeals to conflicting principles of justice,' Mr. Mill considers it impossible to decide. 'Justice,' he says, 'has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible to bring into harmony, and the two disputants have chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what it is just that the individual should receive, the other to what it is just that the community should give. Each from his own point of view is unanswerable, and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference.'[18] The form of justice depicted with this Janus-like aspect can scarcely be the utilitarian, since, whoever, on utilitarian grounds, selects one of its sides, must perforce, on the same grounds, reject the other. Still, it is spoken of as genuine justice, wherefore that there is a justice independent of utility, would seem, after all, to be admitted by Utilitarians themselves. It is for them, however, to deal with the dilemma which their own ingenuity has thus devised. My only concern with the two-headed monster they have imagined is to protest against its being mistaken for the one sole species of justice which Anti-utilitarianism recognises, and which never presents any such double-faced appearance. In the case before us anti-utilitarian justice would decide with her accustomed ease between the two appellants. What she would look to would simply be that each co-operator should have his due. But how much soever she might declare an inferior workman to deserve for doing his best, she certainly would not allow his deserts to extend to participation in the fruits of the toil of those of his fellows who had done better than he. His having produced as much as he was able could not render due to him a share in the larger produce of others of superior capacity. Very possibly the superior workmen might agree that all should participate equally in the aggregate results of their joint labour. If so, well and good. For so liberal a concession they would deserve credit, and thanks would be due to them from those in whose favour it was made; but this of itself would be a conclusive proof, if any were wanting, that the concession was an act, not of justice, but of generosity, not of debt, but of grace.

Again, what discordance is there not as to the most equitable repartition of taxation! That all should be taxed in equal proportion to their pecuniary means; that taxation should be a graduated percentage on income, rising as income rose; that all, whether rich or poor, should be taxed alike; that all should pay equal capitation, but unequal property-tax—these are some out of many divergencies of opinion, and 'from these confusions' there is, Mr. Mill considers, 'no other mode of extrication than the utilitarian.'[19] But if there were really no other, there would, in fact, be none at all. For opinions differ scarcely less as to the utility, than as to the justice of each specified mode of taxation. There are quite as many persons who think it expedient as who think it equitable that people should be taxed either equally, or according to any of the suggested schemes of inequality. All the help that Utilitarianism here affords is, as usual, to leave every one to judge for himself which plan is the most advisable, and then to pronounce that to be the only moral plan. Anti-utilitarianism offers guidance of a very different sort. It wastes no time in seeking for an escape from confusion, for it allows no confusion to exist. It spurns equally the idea of different persons being required to pay different prices for equal quantities of the same thing, merely because some of them can afford to pay more, and that of their being all required to pay the same price for different quantities, merely because all are equally in need of the quantities they respectively obtain. It recognises only an imperfect analogy between a club or a mess to which no one need subscribe unless he likes, and a national community to whose funds every resident within its territory has no choice but to contribute; and while quite content that members of the one should be assessed at any rates to which they have spontaneously consented, it protests against the imposition on members of the other of burdens disproportioned to their several abilities. It denies that the shilling of a man who has but one in the world is of the same value to him because it is his all, as is to another an estate bringing him in 100,000l. a year, seeing that, if the former had his pocket picked, he might presently beg, borrow, or earn a second coin, whereas if the latter were dispossessed of his estate he might live to the age of Methusaleh without acquiring its equivalent. It perceives that a rich man, by receiving public protection for his property as well as his person, is relieved from an expense in maintaining private watchmen, which a poor man, with nothing but his carcass to defend, would have as little occasion as ability to incur; and it concludes that more being thus in effect given to the rich, more is due from him in return, and more, consequently, may be rightfully exacted.

We come, now, to a case that may well give to both Utilitarians and Anti-utilitarians pause—with this difference, however, that whereas it brings the former to an everlasting standstill, the latter may, after a while, go on complacently meditative, at least, if not rejoicing.

There are certain situations in which justice loses its authority. 'Thus, to save a life, it may be allowable ... to steal or take by force the necessary food or medicine, or kidnap and compel to officiate the only qualified medical practitioner.'[20] Wherefore, since to steal or to kidnap is essentially wrong, it may sometimes be allowable to do wrong. Mr. Mill's explanation of the paradox is, that 'there are particular cases in which some other social duty is so important as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice; but that in such cases we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case.'[21] I submit, however, that there is no real occasion to resort to any such 'useful accommodation of language,' in order to be 'saved from the necessity of admitting that there may be laudable injustice.' Let us never shrink from looking error in the face, for fear that, after she has slunk away abashed, some insoluble mystery may remain behind. It is better, at any rate, to be puzzled than deceived. There can be no doubt about theft being essentially unjust, and no skill in the arrangement of words can convert injustice into justice, or prevent injustice from being wrong. But when, as occasionally happens, the only choice open to us is between two immoral courses, it is morally incumbent on us to select the less immoral of the two. The wrong we decide upon does not, however, itself become smaller because it prevents a larger. A sworn bravo, who had taken in advance the wages of assassination, would sin less by breaking than by keeping faith with his employer; but, in either case, would sin. Abstinence from murder would not absolve him from the guilt of perjury. If, unless a loaf were stolen, a life would be lost, Anti-utilitarianism might pardon, but would scarcely applaud the theft. At all events it would not, like the rival doctrine in a similar strait, be reduced to double on itself, declaring that wrong had become right and black white, that the Ethiopian had changed his skin and the leopard his spots. It would still insist as positively as ever that to steal another man's bread cannot be just, however benevolent the purpose for which it is stolen.

One more illustration and I have done. Whoever believes as I do in the indefeasible sanctity of honestly acquired moveable property, is logically bound to hold equally sacred the rights of bequest and inheritance. With whatever is exclusively your own, you may surely do anything you please except harm; nor need even harm be excepted if it be done to yourself alone. If, indeed, you go the length of playing ducks and drakes with gold pieces, or of lighting cigars with bank-notes, you are likely enough to be stopped and placed under restraint as a lunatic, but it is clear that this will be done solely because you are presumed not to understand what you are doing, and not from any question as to your right to do it if you do understand, for there are plenty of things far more objectionable in themselves, only not implying a want of sanity, which you will be left perfectly at liberty to do. If you choose, in imitation of Cleopatra, to spoil your fish-sauce by mixing powdered pearls with it, or, in imitation of a certain Peruvian viceroy, to shoe your carriage horses with silver, no one will dream of interfering with you; any more than of preventing courtesans and other fine ladies from befouling their nether limbs by sweeping the dusty road with flounces of Brussels lace; or of preventing members of the Cobden Club from gorging themselves annually, at a cost of five guineas per paunch, in honour of the prince of practical economists. But property, which, however great the good it is capable of doing, you are at liberty to employ solely for your own hurt, you are, of course, at liberty to destroy, thereby preventing it, at least, from doing any more harm. The lesser right of abuse is plainly comprehended in the larger. And of that which is so absolutely your own that you may, if you please, wantonly waste or destroy it, you may, of course, transfer the ownership, thereby conveying to another person all your rights in it, and rendering it as unjust to interfere with the new owner's disposal of the property, as it would previously have been to interfere with yours. Moreover, since the gift is a purely voluntary act, you may, if you please, without impairing its validity, arrange that it shall begin to take effect from some future date instead of immediately; so that, by naming some date subsequent to your own decease, you will be converting the gift into an equally valid bequest. This, I submit, is decisive as to the iniquity of any legal limitation of testamentary power. The right of bequest is comprehended within and rests upon the same basis as the right of possession, so that, unless it would be just to pass a law depriving all persons of any property possessed by them in excess of a given amount, it would not be just to deprive them by law of the power of bequeathing the surplus.

The rights of inheritance obviously coincide precisely with those of bequest. Just so much as the testator parts with the legatee obtains. When the bequest is unconditional, the new owner whom it creates steps into the precise position which the previous owner has vacated. Often, however, a legacy is qualified by conditions, and, among others, by this, that the property bequeathed shall be held in trust for certain purposes. Now, if these purposes be socially noxious, society need not hesitate to set aside the will that has provided for them. Quite justifiably, society might annul the testamentary endowment of a hospital for fleas and lice, such as Bishop Heber, in his Indian tour, found existing at Baroach and at Surat, because those particular insect pests could scarcely be retained within the walls of their infirmary. Perhaps, too, society might be justified in similarly preventing the endowment of a hospital for superannuated dogs and cats; whether it would or not depending mainly on the awkward question whether such inferior animals have any rights inconsistent with human interests. Be this as it may, however, where human interests alone are concerned, the rights of conditional heirship present no ethical difficulty. When it is for purposes socially innocuous and affecting human beings alone that property is left in trust, it cannot be equitably diverted from those purposes without the consent of all the individuals whom the testamentary arrangements were intended to affect. It matters not how whimsical or preposterous the object enjoined may be; not even though it be a periodical dinner, cooked after the manner of the ancients, like the nauseous one at which Peregrine Pickle assisted; or instruction in alchemy or in Hindoo astronomy, or in the art of walking on one's head. Not until there remain no persons at once entitled under the will, and also wishing to partake of the banquet or the instruction, can one or the other be equitably discontinued? As long as there are any such persons left, to stop, without their consent and without adequately compensating them, arrangements, rights in which have been vested in them by bequest, would be as palpable a violation of justice as to pick their pockets of sums equivalent to their several interests, real or supposed, in the arrangements.

If scrupulous adherence to the principle thus laid down would heavily shackle the activity and seriously impair the immediate usefulness of Mr. Forster and his coadjutors in the Endowed School Commission, I am exceedingly sorry, but not in the least shaken in my conviction that the principle ought to be rigidly adhered to. If parochial or other communities are too stupid or too selfish to consent that school endowments under their charge shall be applied to purposes of more extensive utility than the founders contemplated, every effort should be made to persuade or to shame them into consenting, but without their consent the thing should on no account be done. On this point Utilitarianism and Anti-utilitarianism would, I apprehend, give identical counsel, the former condemning as impolitic what the latter denounced as unjust. The cause of national education would be ill served by any course calculated to discourage its future endowment by private testators, and nothing would be more likely to have that effect than arbitrary interference with the endowments of former testators.

The courteous reader may now be temporarily released, with fitting acknowledgment of his exemplary patience. It would be cruel to detain him with a recapitulation, without which he may readily trace for himself, in what has gone before, the outlines of a consistent body of anti-utilitarian ethics. In these there is little new, little that has not been anticipated by many an old-fashioned saw and antiquated apothegm—such as, Fiat justitia ruat caelum, 'Be just before you are generous,' and, I would fain add, 'Honesty is the best policy'—save that to that Utilitarianism may fairly lay equal claim. My modest ambition throughout this essay has been to vindicate some of the most momentous of primeval truths from the slights to which philosophy—not modern, indeed, but modernised and refurbished—is continually subjecting them, and I will not deny that I have modest assurance enough to believe that I have at least partially succeeded. I think I have shown that there are such things as abstract right and wrong, resting not on fancied intuition, but on a solidly rational basis, and supporting in turn abstract justice, whose guidance, whoever accepts it, will find to be as sure and as adequate as any that unassisted reason is capable of supplying. Anti-utilitarian justice never tries to look half-a-dozen different ways at once, never points at the same time in opposite directions, never issues contradictory mandates, never halts between two opinions. Her votaries, like other mortals, may often be in doubt as to accomplished facts; but, provided these be clear, their course is in general equally clear; there seldom remains aught to embarrass them. If they sincerely desire to ascertain what is due from them, they can seldom err, except on the right side, and they will never dream of disputing that whatever is due from them it must be their duty to do, without respect of consequences. These they will leave to the supreme controller of events, if they believe in one, and will leave to take their chance, if they do not so believe, feeling all the more certain in the latter case that to control events cannot, at any rate, be within their power. They never stop to calculate how much good may perhaps ensue if evil be done. Simple arithmetic, apart from faith, satisfies them that to add wrong to wrong cannot possibly augment the sum total of right. The prime article of their creed is the absolute obligation of paying debts—a piece of unworldly wisdom more than ever now to Jews a stumbling-block, and to Greeks foolishness, but not the less to all, whether Jews or Gentiles, who will accept it, a light to show through the mazes of life, a path so plainly marked that the foolishest of wayfaring men cannot greatly err therein.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The distinction here drawn is not merely verbal. The greatest happiness of the greatest number may mean either the largest total of happiness in which the largest possible number of those concerned can participate, or a still larger total, which, if some of the possible participants were excluded, would be divisible among the remainder. The largest aggregate of happiness attainable by any or by all concerned, means the largest sum total absolutely, without reference to the number of participants. Writers on Utilitarianism seem to have sometimes the first, sometimes the second of these totals in view, but more frequently the second than the first.

[2] I do not form a separate class of pleasures of the affections, because these seem to me not to be elementary, but to be always compounded of two or more of the other five kinds.

[3] 'On Labour,' p. 135.

[4] 'Fortnightly Review,' June, 1868.

[5] See the No. for June, 1869.

[6] 'On Labour,' p. 93.

[7] 'Fortnightly Review' for June, 1869, p. 683.

[8] See 'Fortnightly Review' for June, 1869, pp. 687-8.

[9] 'Utilitarianism,' by J. S. Mill, pp. 64-8.

[10] 'Fortnightly Review' for June, 1869, pp. 684-5.

[11] 'Utilitarianism,' p. 267.

[12] 'Utilitarianism,' pp. 69, 70.

[13] 'Les legistes leur fournirent au besoin l'appui du droit contre le droit meme.'—De Tocqueville, 'L'Ancien Regime,' p. 567.

[14] 'Utilitarianism,' pp. 72, 73.

[15] 'Utilitarianism,' p. 71.

[16] 'Utilitarianism,' pp. 81, 82.

[17] 'Utilitarianism,' pp. 84, 85.

[18] Ibid. p. 85.

[19] 'Utilitarianism,' pp. 86, 87.

[20] 'Utilitarianism,' p. 94.

[21] Ibid. pp. 94, 95.



CHAPTER II.

HISTORY'S SCIENTIFIC PRETENSIONS.

Warwick. There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds, And weak beginnings, lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time; And, by the necessary form of this, King Richard might create a perfect guess, That great Northumberland, then false to him, Would, of that seed, grow to a greater falseness, Which should not find a ground to root upon, Unless on you.

King Henry. Are these things, then, necessities?

King Henry IV. Part II. Act. 3, Sc. I.

When equally competent thinkers appear to take directly opposite views of a matter of purely speculative interest, it will commonly be found that their differences arise from their using the same words in different senses, or from their being, by some other cause, prevented from thoroughly apprehending each other's meaning. An illustration is afforded by the controversy regarding the possibility of constructing a Science of History, which could scarcely have been so much prolonged if all who have taken part in it had begun by defining their terms, had agreed to and adhered to the same definitions, and had always kept steadily in view the points really in debate. If the word 'science' had been used only in the restricted, though rather inaccurate sense in which it is sometimes employed by some of the most distinguished of the disputants, there would have been less question as to its applicability to history. No one doubts that from an extensive historical survey may be drawn large general deductions on which reasonable expectations may be founded. No one denies that the experience of the past may teach lessons of political wisdom for the guidance of the future. If it were not so, history would be as uninstructive as fairy lore; its chief use would be to amuse the fancy; and little more practical advantage could result from investigating the causes of the failure of James II.'s designs on civil and religious liberty, than from an inquiry into the artifices by which Jack-the-Giant-killer contrived to escape the maw of the monsters against whom he had pitted himself. What is commonly understood, however, by a Science of History is something far beyond the idea entertained of it by such temperate reasoners as Mr. John Stuart Mill and Mr. Fitzjames Stephen. The science, for the reality of which M. Comte in France and Mr. Buckle in England have been the foremost champions, would bear the same relation to political events as Optics and Astronomy do to the phenomena of light and of the solar and sidereal systems. It would deal less with the conjectural and probable than with the predicable and positive. 'In the moral as in the physical world,' say its leading advocates, 'are invariable rule, inevitable sequence, undeviating regularity,' constituting 'one vast scheme of universal order.' 'The actions of men, and therefore of societies, are governed by fixed eternal laws,' which 'assign to every man his place in the necessary chain of being,' and 'allow him no choice as to what that place shall be.' One such law is that, 'in a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own lives:' another, that a certain number of persons must commit murder; a third, that when wages and prices are at certain points, a certain number of marriages must annually take place, 'the number being determined not by the temper and wishes of individuals, but by large general facts, over which individuals can exercise no authority.' These are general laws; but the special question as to who shall commit the crimes or the indiscretion enjoined by them, 'depends upon special laws, which, however, in their total action must obey the large social law to which they are all subordinate.' A Science of History would consist of a collection of 'social laws,' duly systematised and codified, by the application of which to given states of society the historical student might predict the future course of political events, with a confidence similar to that with which he could foretell the results of familiar chemical combinations, or the movement of the planets.[22]

This is the theory which a few years ago was so much discussed, and against which, notwithstanding the singular fascination it evidently possesses for some minds, the moral sense of a much larger number indignantly revolts, rightly apprehending that its establishment would be subversive of all morality. For, if the actions of men are governed by 'eternal and immutable laws,' men cannot be free agents; and where there is not free agency there cannot be moral responsibility. Nor are the apprehensions entertained on this score to be allayed by the answer, ingenious as it is, which has been given to them[23] by one of the ablest and most judicious apologists for the new creed. It is true that human actions can be said to be 'governed' only in the same metaphorical sense as that in which we speak of the laws of nature, which do not really govern anything, but merely describe the invariable order in which natural phenomena have been observed to occur. It is true that the discovery of invariable regularity in human affairs, supposing such a discovery to have been made, would not prove that there was any necessity for such regularity. It is conceivable that the orbs of heaven may be intelligent beings, possessing full power to change or to arrest their own course, and moving constantly in the same orbits merely because it pleases them to do so. Invariable regularity, therefore, would be perfectly consistent with free agency. All this is perfectly just, but it is also altogether beside the question. The offence given by the writers on whose behalf the apology is set up consists not so much in their asserting that there are, as in their insisting that there must be, uniformity and regularity in human affairs; or, as Mr. Buckle expresses it, that social phenomena 'are the results of large and general causes which, working on the aggregate of society, must produce certain consequences, without regard to the volition of the particular men of whom the society is composed.' Now, though free agency may co-exist with invariable regularity, it obviously cannot co-exist with necessary regularity, which, consequently, is incompatible likewise with moral responsibility. If men are compelled by the force of circumstances, or by any force, to move only in one direction, they cannot be responsible for not moving in a different direction. Nor is it more to the purpose to undertake a subtle analysis of the nature of causation, and to explain that it does not, properly speaking, involve compulsion, but simply means invariable antecedence. Let it be that a cannon-ball does not really knock down the wall against which it strikes, and that it would be more correct to say that the ball impinges and the wall falls; though, seeing that the wall would not have fallen unless the ball had impinged, the distinction is too nice for ordinary apprehension. As understood, at any rate, by the joint headmasters of the new school, causation does involve compulsion. 'Men's actions,' say they, 'are the product not of their volition, but of their antecedents,' and 'result from large and general causes which must produce certain consequences.' Neither, if this be so, is it of any avail to suggest that, possibly, the large and general causes in question may be of only temporary operation. 'It may be that the rules,' in accordance with which the sun has hitherto risen every morning since the creation of the world, 'will hold good only for a time.' It may be that the springs, whatever they are, by which the universe is kept in motion, may require to be periodically wound up like the works of a clock, and that, unless this be done, 'on some particular day out of many billions,' the sun may fail to rise, just as the clock, if suffered to run down, would stop on the eighth day. The conjecture would, of course, be not less applicable to social than to natural laws. It is conceivable that the large general causes assumed to regulate human actions might lose their efficacy at the end of a certain cycle, when mankind might either have to recommence a social revolution similar to the one just completed, or might have to begin an entirely different revolution under entirely different laws. Be it so. Still, if the causes, as long as they remained in operation, possessed a compulsory character—if, during the continuance of the supposed cycle, men were bound to act in a certain way in accordance with certain laws, and irrespectively of their own volition—what would it matter that those laws were not eternal and immutable? For the time being men would no more be free agents than the hands of a clock, while the clock was wound up. Both would be constrained to move in a prescribed direction, whether they would or no. Men in such circumstances might well be likened, as by Mr. Buckle they are likened, to links in a chain, but few would be prevented from joining in Mr. Goldwin Smith's eloquent protest against the comparison, by being told that the chain perhaps was not an endless one.

It is clear, then, that the principles to which we have been adverting would, if established, be really subversive of morality, inasmuch as they are incompatible with free agency, without which there can be no responsibility. The soundness of a doctrine does not, however, depend upon its tendencies; and Mr. Buckle was fully warranted in demanding that his views should be examined with reference, not at all to their consequences, but solely and exclusively to their truth. They certainly ought to be so examined, if examined at all; but morality is so indispensable to the happiness of mankind, that if there were reason for apprehending it to be based upon error, there would be equal reason for avoiding an enquiry which might demonstrate the weakness of its foundations, by bringing forward an antagonistic truth. The only adequate excuse, therefore, for enquiring, as I now proceed to do, into the validity of Mr. Buckle's theory, is the confidence I feel that it will be found to contain not recondite, newly-discovered truth, but, at best, only skilfully and curiously-compounded fallacies, which, being dispelled, will leave the foundations of morality as firm and unimpeachable as before.

In order that he might be able to prove the possibility of a Science of History, Mr. Buckle asked no more than the following concessions: 'That, when we perform an action, we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the results of some antecedents, and that therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the antecedents and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results.' Now, there is certainly nothing in these demands which may not be unhesitatingly conceded. As there can be no effect without a cause, so there can be no action without a motive: the motive or motives of an action are the product of all the conditions and circumstances among which the agent is placed—which conditions and circumstances, again, must have been brought about by antecedent events. The same circumstances would indeed differently affect persons of different mental constitutions and characters; but the original constitution of a man's mind is itself the product of antecedent events, as is also any subsequent modification of character which it may have undergone. It cannot be denied, then, that men's motives are the results of antecedents. Equally undeniable is it that a knowledge of all the antecedents and of all the laws of their movements would enable us to foresee their results, for this, supposing the laws referred to to have any real existence, is merely equivalent to the self-evident proposition, that if we perceived certain causes and knew exactly how they would act, we should know beforehand what would be their effects. But what if there be no such laws? What if, on the showing of Mr. Buckle himself and of his associates, there neither are nor can be?

The true nature of a scientific law has never been better explained than by the writer already quoted as Mr. Buckle's dexterous apologist. A scientific law is not an ordinance, but a record. It simply professes to describe the order in which certain phenomena have been observed uniformly to recur. It differs from a legislative enactment, in that the one would be a law although it were never obeyed, whereas the other would cease to be a law if one single exception to its statement could be pointed out. Thus the Act of Parliament enjoining the registration of births, would be equally a law although no births were ever registered; whereas the law, that in a body moving in consequence of pressure the momentum generated is in proportion to the pressure, would entirely forfeit its legal character if, on any one occasion or in any circumstances, momentum were generated in any other proportion. It is essential, then, to the existence of a scientific law that there should be uniformity of phenomena. But in human affairs uniformity is impossible. No doubt, in exactly the same circumstances exactly the same events must happen; but exactly the same aggregation of circumstances cannot possibly be repeated. Such repetition is inconsistent with the very theory, which is based on the assumption that the repetition is continually happening.

'In the moral as well as the physical world' there are, say the exponents of the new theory, not only 'invariable rule' and 'inevitable sequence,' but 'irresistible growth' and 'continual advance.' In other words, things can never be twice in precisely the same condition—never, at least, within the same cycle. It has, indeed, been suggested that there may be in human affairs the same sort of regularity as is observed by the hands of a clock; and that, as the latter, at the end of every twenty-four hours, recommence the movement which they have just concluded, so at the end of, say 'every ten thousand years,' all the same events which have been happening throughout the period may begin to happen over again in the same order as before. Such a succession, however, would involve quite as much of retrogression as of progression, and the continual advance so boastfully spoken of would be nothing else than a tendency of society to return to the condition from which it had originally emerged. But, even on this uncomfortable hypothesis, there could be no regularity of occurrences within the same cycle; no clue as to the future could be obtained from investigation of the past. On the contrary, the only certainty would then, as now, be that no combination of events which had happened once could happen again, as long as the existing order of things continued. The inference here follows necessarily from the premises. If there be continual advance—if things are constantly moving forward—they cannot remain in the same state; and if not in the same state, they cannot produce the same effects. For, if it be obvious, on the one hand, that precisely the same causes must invariably produce the same results, it is equally evident, on the other, that the same results cannot be reproduced except by the same causes. If causes calculated to bring about certain phenomena undergo either augmentation or diminution, there must be a corresponding change in the phenomena. Now, effects cannot be identical with their causes, and, in the moral world, effects once produced become in turn causes, acting either independently or in conjunction with pre-existing causes. They become in turn the antecedents spoken of by Mr. Buckle, from which spring the motives of human conduct. But, as all such antecedents must necessarily differ from all former antecedents, they must also give rise to motives, must be followed by actions, and must bring about combinations of circumstances, differing from any previously experienced. Thus, in human affairs, there can be no recurrence either of antecedents or of consequences; and, as a scientific law is simply a record of the uniform recurrence of consequences, it follows that in human affairs there can be no scientific laws.

It will be understood that human conduct, and the circumstances or causes which influence it, are here spoken of in the aggregate. It is not pretended that particular causes or circumstances may not continue permanently in operation, though with an influence modified by the concomitance of fresh circumstances; or that they may not continue to produce consequences differing from their former consequences not more than in proportion to the modification undergone by the causes. Still less is it pretended that certain human phenomena, with which human motives have little or nothing to do, may not be repeated once and again, notwithstanding the important changes constantly going on in every human society. It is not denied that marriages may continue for years together to bear much the same annual proportion to the population, provided that during those years there be no material change in the amount of the economical obstacles which commonly interfere, more than anything else, with men's natural inclination to marry. Still less is it denied that, in a given number of births, the number of girls may always preserve nearly the same superiority over that of boys, or that the proportion between red-haired and flaxen-haired children may generally be about the same, or that the percentage of letters misdirected in a given country may vary little during long periods. But, in the first of these cases, men do not get married, as Mr. Buckle imagined, irrespectively of their volition. If, for several years together, marriages continue to bear about the same proportion to population, it is because during that period circumstances continue to present a certain amount, and no more, of opposition to men's connubial proclivities. In the other cases, it is not at all because the parents wish it that a girl is born instead of a boy, or with flaxen hair instead of carrots; neither is it from any motive or intention that letters are often misdirected, but, on the contrary, from want of thought, and from the carelessness and haste with which letter-writing, like most other human actions, is unfortunately too often performed. But, before assuming that this carelessness and haste bear an invariable proportion to numbers, we should inquire whether the proportion of misdirected letters is the same in all human societies—the same, for instance, in France and Spain as in England. If not—if varying circumstances produce different results in this respect in different countries—it may be inferred that a variation of circumstances may produce a difference of result in the same country. It will, at any rate, be clear that there is no 'necessary and invariable order' in which letters are misdirected. In one sense, indeed, it may be said that the proportion of misdirected letters depends upon 'the state of society,' if by that expression be meant, among other things, the numerical proportion which individuals of different characters and habits bear to each other. In that sense, we may accept some far more startling propositions. We may partly admit that the state of society determines the number of murders and suicides, if by this be simply meant that the number of murders and suicides committed will depend upon the number of persons whose characters have been so moulded by circumstances as to dispose them to put an end to their own or other people's lives. But Mr. Buckle, by whom the assertion was made, was careful to explain that his meaning was the very reverse of what is here supposed. Speaking of suicide, he declares it to be 'a general law that, in a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own lives;' adding that 'the question as to who shall commit the crime depends upon special laws,' and that 'the individual felon only carries into effect what is a necessary consequence of preceding circumstances.' In other words, it is not the amount of crime that depends upon the number of persons prepared to commit it; it is the number of criminals which depends upon the amount of crime that must needs be committed. 'Murder,' he elsewhere says, 'is committed with as much regularity, and bears as uniform a relation to certain known circumstances, as do the movements of the tides and the relations of the seasons.' 'The uniform reproduction of crime is more clearly marked, and more capable of being predicted, than are the physical laws connected with the disease and destruction of our bodies. The offences of men are the result not so much of the vices of individual offenders, as of the state of society into which the individuals are thrown.'