[203] See Book iv. chap. iii. § [3].
[204] How far an independent principle of Justice is required for the Utilitarian method will be hereafter considered. (Book iv. chap. [i.])
[205] Aristotle, in expounding the virtue of Δικαιοσύνη, which corresponds to our Justice, notices that the word has two meanings; in the wider of which it includes in a manner all Virtue, or at any rate the social side or aspect of Virtue generally. The word ‘Justice’ does not appear to be used in English in this comprehensive manner (except occasionally in religious writings, from the influence of the Greek word as used in the New Testament): although the verb “to justify” seems to have this width of meaning; for when I say that one is “justified” in doing so and so, I mean no more than that such conduct is right for him. In the present discussion, at any rate, I have confined myself to the more precise signification of the term.
[206] I ought to say that, in my view, this only applies to taxes in the narrower sense in which they are distinguished from payments for services received by individuals from Government. In the case of these latter, I conceive that Justice is rather held to lie in duly proportioning payment to amount of service received. Some persons have held that all payments made to Government ought to be determined on this principle: and this view seems to me to be consistent with the individualistic ideal of political order, which I shall presently examine: but, as I have elsewhere tried to show (Princ. of Pol. Econ. Book iii. chap. viii.), there is an important department of Governmental expenditure to which this principle is not applicable.
[207] It may be well to notice a case in which the very equality of application, which is, as has been said, implied in the mere idea of a law couched in general terms, is felt to be unjust. This is the case where the words of a statute, either from being carelessly drawn, or on account of the inevitable defects of even the most precise terminology, include (or exclude) persons and circumstances which are clearly not included in (or excluded from) the real intent and purpose of the law. In this case a particular decision, strictly in accordance with a law which generally considered is just, may cause extreme injustice: and so the difference between actual Law and Justice is sharply brought out. Still we cannot in this way obtain principles for judging generally of the justice of laws.
[208] It should be observed that we cannot even say, in treating of the private conduct of individuals, that all arbitrary inequality is recognised as unjust: it would not be commonly thought unjust in a rich bachelor with no near relatives to leave the bulk of his property in providing pensions exclusively for indigent red-haired men, however unreasonable and capricious the choice might appear.
[209] It may be observed that sometimes claims generated in this way have legal validity; as when a right of way is established without express permission of the landowner, merely by his continued indulgence.
[210] This is the case even, as I say, when laws are altered lawfully: still more after any exceptional crisis at which there has occurred a rupture of political order: for then the legal claims arising out of the new order which is thus rooted in disorder conflict with those previously established in a manner which admits of no theoretical solution: it can only be settled by a rough practical compromise. See next chapter, § [3].
[211] Book i. chap. vi. § [2].
[212] It is characteristic of an unprogressive society that in it these two points of view are indistinguishable; the Jural Ideal absolutely coincides with the Customary, and social perfection is imagined to consist in the perfect observance of a traditional system of rules.