lfilment 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