in different persons, and always conforms in its
variations to their notion of utility. Each person maintains that
equality is the dictate of justice, except where he thinks that
expediency requires inequality. The justice of giving equal protection
to the rights of all, is maintained by those who support the most
outrageous inequality in the rights themselves. Even in slave countries
it is theoretically admitted that the rights of the slave, such as they
are, ought to be as sacred as those of the master; and that a tribunal
which fails to enforce them with equal strictness is wanting in justice;
while, at the same time, institutions which leave to the slave scarcely
any rights to enforce, are not deemed unjust, because they are not
deemed inexpedient. Those who think that utility requires distinctions
of rank, do not consider it unjust that riches and social privileges
should be unequally dispensed; but those who think this inequality
inexpedient, think it unjust also. Whoever thinks that government is
necessary, sees no injustice in as much inequality as is constituted by
giving to the magistrate powers not granted to other people. Even among
those who hold levelling doctrines, there are as many questions of
justice as there are differences of opinion about expediency. Some
Communists consider it unjust that the produce of the labour of the
community should be shared on any other principle than that of exact
equality; others think it just that those should receive most whose
needs are greatest; while others hold that those who work harder, or who
produce more, or whose services are more valuable to the community, may
justly claim a larger quota in the division of the produce. And the
sense of natural justice may be plausibly appealed to in behalf of every
one of these opinions.

Among so many diverse applications of the term Justice, which yet is not
regarded as ambiguous, it is a matter of some difficulty to seize the
mental link which holds them together, and on which the moral sentiment
adhering to the term essentially depends. Perhaps, in this
embarrassment, some help may be derived from the history of the word, as
indicated by its etymology.

In most, if not in all languages, the etymology of the word which
corresponds to Just, points to an origin connected either with positive
law, or with that which was in most cases the primitive form of
law-authoritative custom. _Justum_ is a form of _jussum_, that which ha