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ARTICLE II.

JUSTICE-WHAT IS IT?

BY REV. LEONARD WITHINGTON, D.D., NEWBURYPORT.

Τίς εἴη ἡ παραβολὴ αὕτη. — Luke viii. 9,

SOME of our most obvious ideas are obvious only to a superficial attention. They grow obscure when we begin to think. They open a door into a dark temple; but every one to whom the door is open does not explore the recess. When an opponent denies the truism, though at first he may seem very absurd, yet his denial excites inquiry, and new difficulties only lead to new solutions. Suppose a column of some old temple should be found in the sands of Palmyra, and some one should deny that it was a column, but say it was brought there by foreign aid, and, on digging, should find that it rested on a stone pedestal, and that pediment on charcoal, and the charcoal on shells; every step of our investigation would go to remove our first impression, and to show that the column was placed there by art, and was a relic of a now desolated edifice. So some common words challenge investigation, and every step in the progress serves to modify our views and lead us to a longer examination and a profounder principle.

No word is more common in our discourses than "Justice"; and no word opens a sharper investigation, or leads to a longer train of thought.

Such a remarkable word calls for examination: First, we shall consider what justice is; and, secondly, consider its importance to a local polity, limited in extent and duration, and then to a whole universe of immortal beings.

I. What is Justice?

It is a growing idea. It resembles that fish in Hindu story, one of the incarnations of Vishnu; first seen in a basin, then in a tub, then in a cistern, then in a lake, and last in the vast ocean; and, in whatever receptacle thrown, instantly filling them all. Justice is as essential to the moral world as space is to the material; as we survey it more, we better comprehend its vast extent. It passes through successive gradations. It begins with children in their family experience, and accompanies them in their sports and games. Most children have experienced this in the discipline of the family; however kind or just their parents may have been, it is impossible for them always to proportion their blame or punishment or their rewards exactly to the disposition of their child. Hence most children can remember occasions when they received more censure than they expected, and rewards which they felt they did not deserve; all signifying that they had formed an idea and expected the execution of strict justice. So in the sports and plays of boys you will frequently hear, as you pass along the streets, sharp disputes; and, in nine cases out of ten, the substance of these disputes will be about puerile justice: "you ought to have done so and so; you were unfair; I wont play unless," etc. When we pass to manhood justice begins in regulating property, in making a bargain, in fixing the rate of taxing. Our first idea of it is paying a debt; signing a promissory note; paying a workman; keeping a promise; or in removing or not removing an ancient landmark. But we soon find that justice extends to invisible things, to mental qualities; to all the injuries and blessings which affect the heart. We read in scripture that "Hanun took David's servants, and shaved off the one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away" (2 Sam. x. 4). Here is no robbery, not very great loss of property, yet a bitter injury, an act of injustice, leading to a fierce war and an extensive destruction.

We must not regard the act merely, but the signification of the act. Hume, in his Essay on Justice, seems to be disposed to confine its influence to property. He makes two suppositions to support his theory. Suppose the spontane-ous productions of the earth to be as abundant as they were in the golden age, when the rivers ran with wine, and honey dropped from the oak. He thinks that this plenty would supersede the necessity of justice or law, as now we need no law to restrain us in the use of water or air. We have a curious example of the effect of such abundance in our own country. At the close of the revolutionary war, a British officer was passing through Virginia. He says: "If a traveller, even a negro, observes an orchard full of fine fruit, either apples or peaches, in or near his way, he alights without ceremony and fills his pocket, and even his bag, if he has one, without asking permission; or, if the proprietor should see him, he is not in the least offended, but makes him perfectly welcome, and assists him in choosing out the fairest fruit. But this is less to be admired at when it is considered that there is no sale here for any kind of fruit, and the finest peaches imaginable are so abundant that the inhabitants daily feed their hogs with them during the season."1

Hume presents another example. "Suppose," says he, "that, though the necessities of the human race continue the same as at present, yet the mind is so enlarged and so replete with friendship and generosity that every man has the utmost tenderness for every man, and feels no more concern for his own interest than for that of his fellows; it seems evident that the use of justice would, in that case, be suspended by such an extended benevolence, nor would the divisions and barriers of property and obligations have ever been thought of. Why should I bind another by a deed, or promise, to do me a good office when I know he is already prompted by the strongest inclination to seek my happiness, and would of himself perform the desired service, except the hurt he thereby received be greater than the benefit thereby accruing to

1 See Annual Register, 1784, p. 84.

me? In which case he knows that, from my innate humanity and friendship, I should be the first to oppose myself to his imprudent generosity. Why raise landmarks between my neighbor's field and mine, when my heart has made no division between our interests; but shares all his joys and sorrows with the same force and vivacity as if originally my own? Every man upon this supposition, being a second self to another, would trust all his interests to the discretion of every man, without jealousy, without partition, without distinction. And the whole human race would form only one family, where all would be in common and be used freely without regard to property; but cautiously, too, with as entire a regard to the necessities of each individual as if our interest were most intimately connected." 1

We can hardly conceive that so subtile a writer should not have seen the fallacy of his own logic. In the first case, when justice is suspended as to its use by the outward abundance, there is always a possibility of intervening scarcity; the peaches may fail; the harvest may be burned; the plenty is seen to be precarious; and thus the use of justice returns with the returning wants of man. And even

in the author's own examples of air and water, which are commonly so abundant as to need no restraint in their use, we all see that cases may occur in which their distribution must be regulated by law, as in the use of wells in Abraham's day (Gen. xxi. 25-30). When one hundred and forty-six Englishmen, in 1756, were confined in the Black-hole in Calcutta, and twenty-three only were found alive the next morning, in this sad condition how valuable would have been a breath of air, communicated for an hour by some tube in the wall! The modification of justice is only confined to the specific lines in which the plenty is found. As to the other case which the writer imagines, namely, supreme benevolence, it is only exchanging coercive justice for voluntary; for who has a clearer idea of what justice is than the man whose generous heart contains the fountain

1 Essays, Vol. ii. p. 212, 213.

from which it flows? In his soul it is pictured to perfection. One man has learned the importance of justice by his sad experience on the other side of the question - by a life of trickery, and spending half his days in a state-prison; and another by the most spontaneous integrity of character and the most effusive benevolence. In which breast is the clearest conception found?

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It must be granted, we think, that it is impossible to confine the use of justice to the use of property; for the only evil of invading a man's property is, that through his purse you wound his heart. Now, if the same pain is inflicted in any other way, it is impossible not to see that the same analogy holds. Pain has been inflicted, and a bad intention has been evinced in the deed. The apostle enjoins : Render, therefore, to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor" (Rom. iii. 7). If you meet a man one day, and slip your hand into his pocket, and take out a ten dollar bill, and never return its value, and meet him again a few months after, and refuse to call him Captain, or Colonel, if the title is contested, and he value it the more, and you know it, I cannot see why refusing the title should not be a greater act of injustice than purloining the paper. The Bible says: "He that uttereth a slander is a fool." If a man, now, values his character more than his property (and thousands do), we cannot see why the slanderer is not a thief, in being a fool.

"Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed."

The analogy is perfect, and cannot fail to be seen. Property is not the limit of justice. Justice is a divine principle, and disdains to have either her privileges or duties confined within these material precincts. When you have led etherial justice to these material walls, like invisible space she is

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