Godwin’s principle of justice is that each should do to others all the good that is in his power. It is an impartial treatment of every man in matters that relate to his happiness—a treatment which is to be measured solely by a consideration of the properties of the receiver and the capacity of him who bestows. Everything should be so disposed—material comforts so distributed as to give the same amount of pleasure to all. Personal and private feelings such as gratitude and parental affection should be destroyed. A just man will consider the general good only. Hence if my father and a stranger who is of more benefit to society than my father are both in danger of death, I am bound to try to save the stranger first.[91] Shelley has something similar to this in his Essay on Christianity: “I love my country, I love the city in which I was born, my parents, my wife and the children of my care, and to these children, this woman, this nation, it is incumbent on me to do all the benefits in my power.... You ought to love all mankind, nay every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.” Godwin says that one principle of justice is “to be no respecter of persons.”[92] In a letter to Miss Hitchener, October, 1811, Shelley writes: “I ... set myself up as no respecter of persons.” “The end of virtue,” says Godwin, “is to add to the sum of pleasurable sensation.” In the Essay on Christianity Shelley writes: “This and no other is justice: to consider under all circumstances and consequences of a particular case how the greatest quantity and purest quality of happiness will ensue from any action; this is to be just; and there is no other justice.” Godwin[93] attempts to tell how we can find out whether an action would be just or not. He warns us against measuring the morality of an action according to existing laws. We can determine its morality only by trying to estimate the amount of happiness or pain it will cause others. “One of the best practical rules of morality,” he writes, “is that of putting ourselves in the place of another.... It is by this means only that we can form an adequate idea of his pleasures and pains.”[94] Shelley expresses the same thought in his Defense of Poetry: “A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”
For Shelley laws are “obscure records of dark and barbarous echos,” “tomes of reasoned wrong glozed on by ignorance.”[95] Lawyers are those who, skilled to snare
The feet of justice in the toils of law
Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still.[96]
“Government,” he says, “cannot make a law, it can only pronounce that which was the law before its organization, viz.: the moral result of the imperishable relations of things;”[97] and in his Address to the Irish: “No act of a national representation can make anything wrong which was not wrong before: it cannot change virtue and truth.” All this is merely a repetition of Godwin’s principles. “Immutable reason,” he says, “is the true legislator, and her decrees it behooves us to investigate. The functions of society extend, not to the making, but the interpreting of law; it cannot decree, it can only declare that which the nature of things has already decreed.”[98]
Godwin was a communist rather than a socialist. Every kind of cooperation was repugnant to him. With regard to the distribution of wealth he taught that any given article belonged to him to whom it will give the greatest sum of benefit or pleasure. A loaf of bread, v. g., belongs to the man who needs it most. Shelley holds that if the properties of the aristocrats were resolved into their original stock, and if each earned his own living, each would be happy and contented, and crime and the temptation to crime would scarcely exist. “If two children,” he writes, “were placed together in a desert island and they found some scarce fruit, would not justice dictate an equal division? If this number is multiplied to any extent of which number is capable, if these children are men, families—is not justice capable of the same extension and multiplication? Is it not the same, are not its decrees invariable?”[99] Again in his Essay on Christianity: “With all those who are truly wise, there will be an entire community not only of thoughts and feelings but also of external possessions.” Both Shelley and Godwin put the rent-roll of lands in the same class as the pension-list which is supposed to be employed in the purchase of ministerial majorities.
It is a calculation of Godwin, says Shelley, “that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced if society would divide the labor equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labor two hours during the day.”[100] Godwin says that the means of subsistence belong entirely to the owner. The fruits of labor belong to the laborer, but he is only the steward of them. He can consume only what he needs, and must preserve and dispense the rest for the benefit of others. In his Essay on Christianity, Shelley writes “every man in proportion to his virtue considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances to possess.”[101] When Shelley proposed to share his income with Elizabeth Hitchener he said that he was not doing an act of generosity, but one of justice—“bare, simple justice.” Godwin says that new inventions and the refinements of luxury are inimical to the welfare of society. These mean more work for the poor while only the rich are benefited.[102] “The poor,” writes Shelley, “are set to labor—for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which ... no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society.” Godwin says that the direct pleasure which luxuries give is very small. They are prized because of the love of distinction which is characteristic of every human mind. Fine bonnets and wealth would not be desired by a family living on a desert island. Why not let the acquisition of learning and the practice of virtue instead of wealth be the road to fame. Shelley writes—
And statesman boasts
Of wealth.... How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue.[103]
Again: “the man who has fewest bodily wants approachest nearest to the Divine Nature. Satisfy these wants at the cheapest rates and expend the remaining energies of your nature in the attainment of virtue and knowledge.... Ye can spend no labor on mechanism consecrated to luxury and pride.”[104] “There is no wealth in the world,” says Godwin, “except this, the labor of man.”[105] Every new luxury is a new weight thrown on the shoulders of the laborer, for which they receive no benefit. In the Notes to Queen Mab, Shelley writes: “there is no real wealth but the labor of man.” “What is misnamed wealth,” writes Godwin, “is merely a power vested in certain individuals by the institutions of society to compel others to labor for their benefit.”[106] “Wealth,” says Shelley, “is a power usurped by the few to compel the many to labor for their benefit.”[107]
Shelley during his sojurn in Ireland, in the spring of 1813, published the Declaration of Rights. This pamphlet afterwards led to the arrest of his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, for distributing the same without authority. Many propositions of the Declaration of Rights bear considerable resemblance to some of the proposals of the Declaration of Rights adopted by the Constitutional Assembly of France in August, 1789.
No. 3 of Shelley’s Declaration reads as follows: “Government is devised for the security of rights. The rights of men are liberty and an equal participation in the commonage of nature.” Proposition No. 2 of the Constituent Assembly is: “The object of every political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, security, resistance to oppression.”