enerous only in the
proportion in which it involves self-sacrifice, voluntarily undergone
for the benefit of others, without any view on the agent's part to
further compensation than that derivable from the consciousness of
making other people happy. In such voluntary and disinterested
self-sacrifice consists the merit which is one chief characteristic of
generosity as of most positive virtue, distinguishing it from justice,
in which there is never a surrender of anything which one would be
warranted in keeping, but merely a rendering of what belongs or is due
to others. All conduct, not immoral, admits, as already more than once
intimated, of a tripartite division, into that which may be rightfully
enforced; that of which, though it be not due nor rightfully enforcible,
neglect deserves to be and may justly be punished by reproaches; that
which is neither due nor reasonably to be looked for, but which involves
a voluntary surrender for the good of others of some good which one
might without reproach keep for oneself. Of this last description is the
only conduct in which there is any proper or positive virtue.

So much and such complex argumentation may not impossibly be deemed a
good deal in excess of what is requisite to establish the conclusion to
which it points, and which may be summed up in the following very simple
propositions:--That, by a person's rights being understood the privilege
of having or doing whatever no other person has a right to prevent his
having or doing, justice consists of abstinence from conduct that would
interfere with that privilege; that justice, therefore, is not dependent
on extrinsic sanction, but arises spontaneously from the nature of
things, and may almost indeed be said to spring necessarily from the
meaning of words; and that its sole merit is exemption from the demerit
that would attach to the withholding or withdrawing from any person
anything belonging or due to that person. With all possible confidence,
however, in the innate vigour of these propositions, I cannot suppose
that they do not require all possible adventitious strengthening to be
qualified to displace the doctrine to which they are opposed. I proceed,
therefore, to test somewhat further the adequacy of the description of
justice which they involve by confronting it with certain intricate
problems, in presence of which the rival utilitarian definition will be
found to be hopelessly at fault.

There are few subjects