tion 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
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