,
some right purely intrinsic. We have seen that there are two rights
endued with this intrinsic character--viz., that of absolute control
over one's own self or person, and that of similar control over whatever
else has by honest means come into one's exclusive possession, or become
due or owing to him exclusively; and, because these rights, wherever the
conditions necessary for their exercise occur, of necessity exist,
springing up at once and full grown, in the necessary absence of any
antagonistic rights that could prevent their existing, I have not
scrupled to call them 'natural;' nor do I think that further apology can
be needed for such application of the epithet. To maintain, moreover,
that these natural rights constitute the essence of all artificial
rights, was simply equivalent to saying that no so-called right can be
genuine unless requiring for its satisfaction no more than already
actually belongs or is due to its claimant; while every right which does
require no more must be genuine, because there can nowhere exist the
right to withdraw or to withhold from any one anything that is
exclusively his. These seeming truisms are indeed diametrically opposed
to a theory which enters on its list of friends names no less
illustrious than those of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Bentham, and Mill.
Still, whoever, undeterred by so formidable an array of adverse
authorities, is prepared to accept the description of rights of which
they form part, will have no difficulty in framing a theory of justice
perfectly conformable thereunto.

The justice of an action consists in its being one, abstinence from
which is due to nobody. The justice of inaction--for just or unjust
behaviour may be either active or passive--consists in there being
nobody to whom action, the reverse of the inaction, is due. 'Justice,
like many other moral attributes, may be best defined by its opposite,'
and all examples of injustice have this one point in common, that they
withhold or withdraw from some person something belonging or due to him,
or in some other way infringe his rights, and consequently wrong him.
Conversely, a point common to and characteristic of all just acts and
omissions, is that they neither prevent anybody from having that which
is due to him, nor in any other way infringe any one's rights, and that
they consequently do no one any wrong. It is not essential to the
justice of conduct that anything due be thereby rendered. It suffices