uestion it is argued, that whoever does the best he can,
deserves equally well, and ought not in justice to be put in a position
of inferiority for no fault of his own; that superior abilities have
already advantages more than enough, in the admiration they excite, the
personal influence they command, and the internal sources of
satisfaction attending them, without adding to these a superior share of
the world's goods; and that society is bound in justice rather to make
compensation to the less favoured, for this unmerited inequality of
advantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary side it is contended,
that society receives more from the more efficient labourer; that his
services being more useful, society owes him a larger return for them;
that a greater share of the joint result is actually his work, and not
to allow his claim to it is a kind of robbery; that if he is only to
receive as much as others, he can only be justly required to produce as
much, and to give a smaller amount of time and exertion, proportioned to
his superior efficiency. Who shall decide between these appeals to
conflicting principles of justice? Justice has in this case two sides to
it, which it is impossible to bring into harmony, and the two disputants
have chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what it is just that the
individual should receive, the other to what it is just that the
community should give. Each, from his own point of view, is
unanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must
be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference.

How many, again, and how irreconcileable, are the standards of justice
to which reference is made in discussing the repartition of taxation.
One opinion is, that payment to the State should be in numerical
proportion to pecuniary means. Others think that justice dictates what
they term graduated taxation; taking a higher percentage from those who
have more to spare. In point of natural justice a strong case might be
made for disregarding means altogether, and taking the same absolute sum
(whenever it could be got) from every one: as the subscribers to a mess,
or to a club, all pay the same sum for the same privileges, whether they
can all equally afford it or not. Since the protection (it might be
said) of law and government is afforded to, and is equally required by,
all, there is no injustice in making all buy it at the same price. It is
reckoned justice, n