for all our immunity from evil, and for the whole value of all and
every good, beyond the passing moment; since nothing but the
gratification of the instant could be of any worth to us, if we
could be deprived of anything the next instant by whoever was
momentarily stronger than ourselves. Now this most indispensable of
all necessaries, after physical nutriment, cannot be had, unless the
machinery for providing it is kept unintermittedly in active play. Our
notion, therefore, of the claim we have on our fellow-creatures to
join in making safe for us the very groundwork of our existence,
gathers feelings around it so much more intense than those concerned
in any of the more common cases of utility, that the difference in
degree (as is often the case in psychology) becomes a real
difference in kind. The claim assumes that character of
absoluteness, that apparent infinity, and incommensurability with
all other considerations, which constitute the distinction between the
feeling of right and wrong and that of ordinary expediency and
inexpediency. The feelings concerned are so powerful, and we count
so positively on finding a responsive feeling in others (all being
alike interested), that ought and should grow into must, and
recognised indispensability becomes a moral necessity, analogous to
physical, and often not inferior to it in binding force exhorted,

  If the preceding analysis, or something resembling it, be not the
correct account of the notion of justice; if justice be totally
independent of utility, and be a standard per se, which the mind can
recognise by simple introspection of itself; it is hard to
understand why that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so many
things appear either just or unjust, according to the light in which
they are regarded.

  We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertain standard,
which every different person interprets differently, and that there is
no safety but in the immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakable
dictates of justice, which carry their evidence in themselves, and are
independent of the fluctuations of opinion. One would suppose from
this that on questions of justice there could be no controversy;
that if we take that for our rule, its application to any given case
could leave us in as little doubt as a mathematical demonstration.
So far is this from being the fact, that there is as much difference
of opinion, and as much discussion, about what is just, as about
what is useful to society. Not only have different nations and
individuals different notions of justice, but in the mind of one and
the same individual, justice is not some one rule, principle, or
maxim, but many, which do not always coincide in their dictates, and
in choosing between which, he is guided either by some extraneous
standard, or by his own personal predilections.

  For instance, there are some who say, that it is unjust to punish
any one for the sake of example to others; that punishment is just,
only when intended for the good of the sufferer himself. Others
maintain the extreme reverse, contending that to punish persons who
have attained years of discretion, for their own benefit, is despotism
and injustice, since if the matter at issue is solely their own
good, no one has a right to control their own judgment of it; but that
they may justly be punished to prevent evil to others, this being
the exercise of the legitimate right of self-defence. Mr. Owen, again,
affirms that it is unjust to punish at all; for the criminal did not
make his own character; his education, and the circumstances which
surrounded him, have made him a criminal, and for these he is not
responsible. All these opinions are extremely plausible; and so long
as the question is argued as one of justice simply, without going down
to the principles which lie under justice and are the source of its
authority, I am unable to see how any of these reasoners can be
refuted. For in truth every one of the three builds upon rules of
justice confessedly true. The first appeals to the acknowledged
injustice of singling out an individual, and making a sacrifice,
without his consent, for other people's benefit. The second relies
on the acknowledged justice of self-defence, and the admitted
injustice of forcing one person to conform to another's notions of
what constitutes his good. The Owenite invokes the admitted principle,
that it is unjust to punish any one for what he cannot help. Each is
triumphant so long as he is not compelled to take into consideration
any other maxims of justice than the one he has selected; but as
soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each
disputant seems to have exactly as much to say for himself as the
others. No one of them can carry out his own notion of justice without
trampling upon another equally binding.

  These are difficulties; they have always been felt to be such; and
many devices have been invented to turn rather than to overcome
them. As a refuge from the last of the three, men imagined what they
called the freedom of the will; fancying that they could not justify
punishing a man whose will is in a thoroughly hateful state, unless it
be supposed to have come into that state through no influence of
anterior circumstances. To escape from the other difficulties, a
favourite contrivance has been the fiction of a contract, whereby at
some unknown period all the members of society engaged to obey the
laws, and consented to be punished for any disobedience to them,
thereby giving to their legislators the right, which it is assumed
they would not otherwise have had, of punishing them, either for their
own good or for that of society. This happy thought was considered
to get rid of the whole difficulty, and to legitimate the infliction
of punishment, in virtue of another received maxim of justice, Volenti
non fit injuria; that is not unjust which is done with the consent
of the person who is supposed to be hurt by it. I need hardly
remark, that even if the consent were not a mere fiction, this maxim
is not superior in authority to the others which it is brought in to
supersede. It is, on the contrary, an instructive specimen of the
loose and irregular manner in which supposed principles of justice
grow up. This particular one evidently came into use as a help to