Justice

In the preceding chapters I have taken pains to point out the connection between one virtue and another; and the three already discussed — wisdom, courage and temperance — are very closely related. But the connection of the fourth, justice, with the other three is not so close. Those are virtues of personal character; this has respect chiefly to other people. No doubt, without wis dom, courage and temperance a man cannot cultivate justice with any success, and, on the other hand, the earnest pursuit of justice will react favourably on those other virtues, but, on the whole, while the first three cause him who is cultivating them to look continually within, this fourth causes him who is exercising it to look continually without, and to consider what he owes to other people.

For justice is the rendering to every one of what is his due. It is the virtue of man, not as he stands by himself, but in his place in society; and, in order to understand his whole duty in regard to it, a man has to remember his relations to all other human beings — his superiors, inferiors and equals — and his connection with each circle of the social organization — such as the family, the city, the nation and the church. As man has relations to creatures beneath him and to beings above him, besides those to his fellow-men, the idea of justice might be stretched so as to include behaviour to the lower animals and duties towards God; and, indeed, in some modern books cruelty to animals is discussed under justice, while in the ethical systems of the schoolmen, and especially in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas — the book recommended before all others to the study of Christendom by the present Pope — the latter forms the greater part of justice, the worship of God in all its branches being discussed in connection with it; but, on the whole, it is better to limit the scope of justice to the relations of human beings to each other.

This is, in itself, a wide field, for it comprehends the mutual duties of parents and children, of husbands and wives, of brothers and sisters, of friends, of neighbours, of clergy and laity, of employers and employed, of rulers and subjects, and of others too numerous to be mentioned. If any one were a model in all these respects, he would be a perfect man. Hence justice has often been spoken of as the whole of virtue, and Aristotle, in an unwonted access of enthusiasm, speaks of it as being more beautiful than the morning or the evening star.

While the definition of justice as the rendering to every one of his due seems a very simple one, it is in reality not so simple as it looks. This you realise as soon as you begin to ask what is the due of any one in particular. Every such question is complicated by the question hidden in it, What is my due? — for the bias in favour of self too often confuses the verdict. You may lay down a proposition like that embodied in the American Declaration of Independence, that every one has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; but you are immediately pulled up by questions like these: Is that man entitled to life who has taken the life of another? is a lunatic to be allowed liberty? does not many a man’s pursuit of happiness involve misery for other men and women? In short, what is any one’s due, and especially, what is one’s own due in any relationship of life, can frequently be ascertained only by close and dispassionate inquiry; and, in order to be trained not only to perform acts of justice but to have a habit of justice, ready to act on every occasion, we require to put ourselves to more than one school of justice and learn the lessons there imparted. Let us inquire what these schools are.

I. — THE JUSTICE OF THE LAW

So essential is justice for the welfare of all that, wherever men have risen, even in a slight degree, above the savage state, they have employed their best wisdom to declare what justice is and their united strength to enforce it. In early Rome what were called the Twelve Tables were set up in the market-place, where they could be read by every one, and they told in the plainest words what were the duties of a citizen and what were

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the penalties of the infringement of them. As civilisation advances, the picked men of the nation are formed into parliaments for the purpose of defining the rights of the different classes in the community; law-courts are erected, judges and juries sit, and lawyers argue, for the purpose of applying to particular cases what has been laid down in general in the law of the land; while the whole apparatus of prisons and punishments exists for the purpose of sharpening in the public mind the consciousness of the majesty of the law.

In every country these institutions form a school to which the citizens are put, and in which they learn almost unconsciously multitudes of things which they must do and multitudes of things which they must not do. In most cases the schooling takes effect almost as perfectly as the schooling of nature by which every one learns very early in life not to stand in the way of a falling body or to bring the hand too near a fire. Most of us have never been in the clutches of the law of the land, and it may not occur to us once in a year that this is a danger we have to avoid. But, for all that, the law has been our schoolmaster, teaching us to do no wrong to our neighbour and to fulfil the promises, formal or tacit, we have made to him; and our unconsciousness that the law and we have had anything to do with each other only proves how well its work has been done.

II. — THE JUSTICE OF PUBLIC OPINION

The law of the land in any modern state is an embodiment of the experience of centuries, during which multitudes of the acutest minds have been giving their best strength to define what justice is. In the law of our own land streams of wisdom mingle, derived both, on the one side, from the classical nations and, on the other, from our Teutonic ancestors. Yet, with all that has been done, the law of the land is an extremely imperfect embodiment of justice, and one might remain for life securely outside the clutches of the law and yet be the reverse of a just man.

Of the holes in the network of the law of the land a striking illustration was supplied a short time ago in one of our cities. A man who had occupied a high office in the municipality was summoned into court to answer for a use of his position which, if it became common, would corrupt the administration of the city through and through; but it turned out that what he was charged with doing is no offence against any law in the statute-book. Of course I am expressing no opinion as to whether the particular person accused was guilty or not of what was alleged against him, but the case is a curious instance of the imperfection of the law of the land.

Nor is it always the greatest wrongs which the public ma chinery of justice is directed against, while those it neglects are trivial in comparison. On the contrary, the law often strains at a gnat while it swallows a camel. For example, if any one were to defraud his neighbour of a shilling, the law would lay hold of him and set its whole machinery of police, judges, lawyers and prisons in motion for his punishment; but the same person might, by the arts of temptation carried on for years, make his neighbour’s son a drunkard, or his daughter still worse, and yet escape altogether the notice of the law. That is to say, you may not touch your neighbour’s purse, but you may break his heart with impunity as far as the law of the land is concerned.

This shows the need of a stricter school of justice, and this is furnished by public opinion. A man may keep all his days out of the hands of the police, and the law may never have a word to say against him, yet society may know him to be guilty of acts which it sternly disapproves and will not suffer to be perpetrated with impunity. He is not fined or imprisoned, but society frowns on him, he loses his character, and the doors through which access is obtained to the pleasures and honours of life are shut in his face. Thus silently, but sternly, does public opinion punish the man who is known to be a breaker of the eighth commandment and the woman who has broken the seventh. And, on the whole, this is a salutary check on passion and selfishness, while it does much to render society a more habitable place than it would otherwise be.

III. — THE JUSTICE OF
CONSCIENCE

Public opinion, like the law of the land, leaves holes in the network of justice which it weaves. In fact, much worse can be said of it: it not infrequently commands what it ought to forbid and forbids what it ought to command. In illustration of this may be adduced the law of honour which, not long ago, forbade any member of the upper class to decline a challenge to engage in a duel; and, at the opposite extreme of society, it is still considered dishonourable not to treat visitors to strong drink on New Year’s day. Of course it might be alleged against the law of the land also, that it has often commanded what it was wrong to do and forbidden what was right, as, for instance, when the early Christians were forbidden to worship the Saviour and commanded, on pain of death, to bend the knee to the images of heathen divinities; but a false verdict of public opinion is more difficult to combat than a wrong statute.

The appeal from it, however, is to the conscience of the individual, in which there is erected another school of justice, and a very venerable one. Let any one, when not sure what is right or wrong, retire with the question into the solitude of his own breast, let him rid himself of passion and party spirit, and ask himself what he ought to do; and, provided he really wishes to learn the truth, he will seldom fail to ascertain what is his duty. It is a far finer and more severe type of morality that is taught in this school than in that of either public opinion or the law of the land; and it is the great object of religion to strengthen the conscience, teaching men to feel that, confronted by it alone, they are in a more august presence than in any law-court, however high, or in a whole theatre of spectators. It was to the conscience Jesus appealed when he framed the Golden Rule, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them ‘; and this is the soul of justice.

IV. — THE JUSTICE OF CHRIST

As I have just quoted the Golden Rule, it might be thought we had already obtained Christ’s contribution to justice. Jesus was a moralist, contending earnestly for righteousness and fair-play between man and man and between class and class; He was the heir and the successor of the prophets — those stern denouncers of wrong — and He emitted many rules of justice, this golden one among them; yet this was not His principal contribution to this cause.

There are some things that make it easy to render to certain persons all that is their due, or even more. In railway-travelling every one has noticed the attention paid by guards and porters to those travelling first-class. When royalty is in any city, all the arrangements of traffic give way to its convenience, and the citizens vie with one another in placing their services at the disposal of the royal visitors. There is not a town in the world where the well-dressed do not receive more courtesy than the ragged. This is human nature. In many cases it may be contemptible, but it is at least fair to take advantage of it on behalf of those at the opposite extreme of the social scale. Jesus did so. He endeavoured to secure fairer treatment for the common man by raising the universal estimate of him. If the poor are treated without consideration because they are invested with no distinction and dignity to arrest the eye, the treatment which they receive will be improved by anything which secures for them respect and reverence. Now, to the mind that has taken in the teaching of Christ, the very humblest belong to that humanity which He took into His heart and for which He gave His life; and it is impossible thus to see our fellow-men through Christ’s eyes — to see God in them, in short — without having a fine and powerful motive for treating them with justice.

As the discussion of our theme has been pretty abstract in this chapter, it may be advisable to finish with a practical illustration, and this I shall take from the great struggle between capital and labour which is surging on every hand at the present time. What would the four teachers say about what is due by employer to employed, and what is due by employed to employer?

First, the teaching of the law of the land is very brief, but decisive. It simply says to the master, ‘Pay that thou owest,’ and to the servant, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ And, simple as this teaching is, there are those to whom it is the thunder of God.

Secondly, public opinion goes a good deal beyond this, though its voice is divided. There is a public opinion of employers, which the employer hears perhaps too exclusively, and there is a public opinion of the employed, which the employe hears perhaps too exclusively. The former urges the stern application of the law of supply and demand, while the latter counsels to take advantage of the employers’ necessities. But there is a wider public opinion which decides more impartially: it frowns upon the employer if he is not at least trying to provide the best conditions of labour which others have been able to allow in his business, and it censures the mechanic or labourer if, instead of doing his best, he follows a ‘ca’ canny’ policy — the tyranny of officials who would impose this upon him being, in the judgment of the wider public,as demoralising as that of the task-masters of Egypt, though the modern whip is used in favour of too little work, whereas the ancient was in favour of too much. This wider public opinion is imperfectly informed and, therefore, makes mistakes; but, on the whole, the influence which it wields is invigorating.

From its blunders employer or employ can appeal to the third tribunal mentioned — his own conscience. Let him ask there, as an honest man, what he ought to do, what God wishes him to do, and what he would wish the other man to do to him, if places were exchanged; and then, if he is loyal to the decision of his conscience, he can hold up his head and brave public opinion, however hostile and unanimous.

Last of all, what is the message of Christian principle to master and servant? It will remind the former, that his servants have an immortal destiny, and will con strain him to minimise or abolish arrangements, like Sabbath labour and excessive hours, which secularise and brutalise; while servants, as they toil, will hear a voice behind them saying, ‘Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men.’

I do not mean to say that even with all these sources of light the question of justice will always be an easy one. The reciprocal rights of corporate bodies are particularly difficult to define. But, at all events, it is by letting the instructions of these different teachers play upon the mind that the level of public justice will be raised and the individual prepared for appearing before that solemn tribunal where the sentences of this world will all be revised and a verdict pronounced from which there can be no appeal.